


WinterHawk Kisses

by Nny



Series: Winterhawk Kisses [1]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Hockey, Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Regency, Alternate Universe - Robin Hood, Asexual Character, Asexual Clint Barton, Bucky's 100th Birthday, Circus Performer Clint Barton, Dancing, Emotional Baggage, Hurt/Comfort, Kid Fic, M/M, Marriage, Morning Kisses, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Sharing Clothes, Single Dad Clint, Sleepy Kisses, Truth Spells, World War II, clint's love affair with coffee, unnecessary swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-10
Updated: 2017-06-18
Packaged: 2018-10-02 04:18:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 150
Words: 49,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10209470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nny/pseuds/Nny
Summary: A collection of kisses posted on theWinterhawkkissestumblr. After the first influx, this will be updated weekly with the kisses from the week.This fic is no longer being updated - ficlets are now being posted in the second fic in the series.Please note: the major character death warning applies only to chapter 41; all chapters are separate stories unless otherwise noted.The 'asexual character' tag applies to chapter 32.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> With many, many thanks to everyone who's ever liked or reblogged one of these.

"Oh man," said a doleful voice from the ceiling, "I am gonna die." 

Bucky looked up, startled. He'd been pretty sure it was just him and Natasha in the kitchen, comfortable silence in the pre-dawn dimness, and the addition of another Avenger stealthy enough to sneak up on him didn't exactly sit right. 

It was a little difficult to find Barton much of a threat, though, especially when he had emerged to hang awkwardly out of a vent, attempting to disentangle something, face slowly flushing red as the blood rushed to his head. 

"Er," said Bucky. "Morning?" 

The two ignored him. 

"You really don't have to," Natasha said, stirring her coffee without looking at Barton, legs crossed at the ankle and casual disregard for her inverted partner in every graceful line of her. 

"Yeah," Barton said, resigned, as Bucky walked across to him, to the cupboard right next to him that held all the mugs, "but I'm gonna." 

"Gonna w-" Bucky started, but didn't get to finish. 

"SPIDER-MAN KISS!" Barton yelled, and lunged forward, slamming his nose into Bucky's chin and managing, just barely, to brush their lips together. Bucky froze, startled, staring wide-eyed at the stupid grin on Barton's face. 

"You know," Natasha said idly, "the aim of a bucket list is not to get murdered as a result of doing the things." 

"Aaw," Barton said, sending an inverted wink Bucky's way, "where the hell's the fun in that?"


	2. Chapter 2

“He was calling for the _Spider_ ,” his rescuer said, wounded. “Like that wanted poster with the guy with the enormous -”

“ _Clint_.” The voice coming from under the dark hood was exasperated, and husky, and almost certainlyfemale. James shifted his weight, surprised and off-balance.  


“He looked like he needed help?” Clint attempted defensively, gesturing at James and his - well, _everything_. He wasn’t wrong. The Sheriff’s men had not been kind.  


“There is a reason,” the woman said, an edge of amusement creeping into her voice, “that we call it a _secret_ hideout.” She reached forward and tilted James’ chin enough that his hair fell away from his face, looking not the slightest intimidated by his scowl. “Ah _,_ “ she said, “I see,” and Clint looked suddenly fascinated by the stringing of his bow.  


“Can you be useful?” she asked, and James shrugged.  


“I can fight,” he said, aware that as much could be said of any man tall enough to hold a battered sword.  


“Then you can be useful. I am the Widow. The idiot behind you is Hawkeye, and he and I will be having _words.”_ She turned on her heel and walked into the trees, disappearing far sooner than ought to have been possible. Clint scuffed at the ground like a reprimanded child and shot James a wide and unrepentant grin.  


“She loves me really,” he said. “I’m kind of irresistible.” And with an absurd waggle of his eyebrows he bowed to James, grabbing his fingers and placing a kiss on the back of his one remaining hand.  


“Welcome to the Avengers,” he said.  



	3. Chapter 3

“Ow,” Clint says. “Ow, ow, ow...”

“Goddamn you’re a whiny punk,” Bucky says. His brusque tone is kind of undermined, though, by how carefully he shifts Clint’s weight, how gently he lowers him slowly to the bed. “Is there any part of you that _doesn’t_ hurt?”

He regrets it immediately, ‘cos the Great Rewatch Project has reached Indiana Jones and he just _knows_ what Clint’s gonna say.   


Sure enough, the asshole points at his elbow, and Bucky rolls his eyes, ignores the warm squishy feeling in his stomach, and flicks Clint _hard_.   


“ _Ow_.”

Bucky grins a dangerous, toothy grin. Clint’s been fucking with him for weeks, now: arms around him on the couch, fluttering eyelashes, the whole nine. It’d be okay if it was funnier, if it was anyone else, if a little part of him didn’t wish it was true.   


“Anywhere else?” he asks, solicitous.   


“I’m good,” Clint says, dropping back against the sheets with a huff and a flash of an expression that Bucky’s not sure he read right, that looks a little too much like _genuine_ disappointment for anything close to a joke.   


Bucky shifts his weight, bends down a little way, rubs a cold metal thumb against Clint’s reddened arm.   


“Uh,” he says, clears his throat. “I think I messed up my line.”   


Clint doesn’t shift an inch as Bucky ducks, heart in his throat, and presses his lips feather-soft against Clint’s skin.   


It’s longer than he means it to be. He’s not sure he can take standing up if Clint’s not grinning like an asshole, not pointing to his mouth.   



	4. Chapter 4

Clint snorted as Bruce Willis ground out his catchphrase and shot himself through the shoulder, and Bucky leaned forward the last couple of inches so he could breathe against the curve of his ear. 

"Don't go getting any ideas." 

"How the hell would I even - " he sounded genuinely confused, shifted as though he were gonna mime it until Bucky tightened metal fingers a fraction, holding his fingers still. "D'you know how bows work?" 

"I'm an assassin," Bucky told him flatly. "I know how bows work." His voice had gone kinda cold without his say so, his shoulders a little hunched. 

"Was," Clint said, implacable, and tugged their hands up so he could detangle their fingers, press a kiss to Bucky's metal palm. 

It was possible, Bucky thought, that this was love.


	5. Chapter 5

When Clint leaned forward, it wasn't meant to be a prelude to anything, and it wasn't absentminded, and it wasn't a goodbye, and somehow that put it into a whole new category of its own. 

Bucky had yanked his hair back and secured it with a cable tie, swearing at the hanks of hair that slid out uncooperatively and fell in his face but too busy mashing buttons to tuck it back. The sloppy bun had a little more structural integrity in back, but not by much - feathery tendrils tickled at the vulnerable nape of Bucky's neck, and it was there that Clint gently pressed his mouth. 

It wasn't a prelude, or absentminded, or a goodbye; more like a promise to protect.


	6. Chapter 6

The man is already wavering on his feet when the Soldier arrives. There are scorch marks and scars, concrete dust in his light hair, medical tape scattered across his arms. He has blood making its slow way down his left arm, and a coffee stain on his undershirt where his vest has been sliced open. He should not still be standing. He should _not_ still be standing. 

“Aaw Bucky,” he says, and he sounds alien. 

The Soldier knows fear, the Soldier knows anger, the Soldier knows, rarely, resignation. The Soldier does _not_ know - 

The Soldier does not know. 

(sorrow)

The man has a face that folds into complications, and something deep down (deep down and screaming) urges him to stop, to wait, to study this infinite complexity of layered emotion, but the man is between the Soldier and the Mission, and the Soldier unsheathes his knife. 

The man laughs. 

“Come at me bro,” he says, raising trembling fists. “I’m right with my dog.” 

He moves faster than he should when the Soldier lunges forward. He is trained, and skilled, and somehow still the Soldier expects him to get tangled in his own feet. 

It is clear the man is weary, though. It is clear he cannot last long. Metal fingers eventually, inevitably wrap around the man’s pale throat, and his chuckle is rusty and grating.

“If this doesn’t work I don’t blame you,” he says. “I hope something in there remembers that.” 

And he says something, words that make the world fall apart, so that the Soldier falls through it and into nothingness. 

*

Bucky blinks his eyes open. 

“Hey Sleeping Beauty,” Clint rasps, and Bucky flexes open his fingers automatically, horrified. “Welcome back.” 

“Clint,” he says, broken, appalled. 

“This part’s supposed to come before the wake up,” Clint says, “but I hope you don’t mind I saved it up for you.” 

The gentle brush of lips is, somehow, salvation. 

The Soldier would not have understood.


	7. Chapter 7

Natasha was making disgusted faces, shaking trailing ribbons of slime from the ends of her fingers. Thor’s and Steve’s hair had taken on a distinct greenish shade, and Hulk was splatting around happily, every hop causing little showers that Bucky had given up on avoiding.   


Even Tony and Sam hadn’t escaped, caught in the final gelatinous explosion, dripping globs of slime from above.   


There was a loud squish and a shower of splatter, and all of them turned to glare upwards as Clint slid down the wire that’d uncoiled, cackling loudly over the comms. He landed light, acrobatic grace that only ever showed itself when they were working. Bucky kinda hated how hot he found it, but not nearly so much as the warmth in his chest at the memory of the coffee stain that hid under the badass tactical vest.   


“Lookin’ good,” Clint drawled, sauntering over, spotless hands tucked into pristine pockets. He nimbly ducked out of the way of the handful of jello-green that Sam aimed in his direction and leaned against the wall two feet from where Bucky was slumped.   


Bucky looked up at him, strands of hair hanging slickly in front of his eyes.   


“Enjoy the view from up there, Princess?”   


Clint grinned. “Does that make you the frog?”   


“You askin’ for a kiss?”

He watched with interest as a flush washed over Clint’s cheeks, as he reached up to rub, embarrassed, at the back of his neck.

“And what if I am?”

Bucky considered for a moment, then lunged abruptly sideways and grabbed Clint’s ankle. It disrupted his balance enough for his boot to skid in the slick green slime, and he crashed down onto his ass in a puddle of goop.   


“Hey,” Clint said, then “hey,” again, more uncertain, as Bucky shoved in close.   


It wasn’t the best, for a first kiss. Bucky was halfway focused on getting his hands all up in Clint’s hair, for one, for full slime coverage. It was a little slicker than he’d usually go for, too, but Bucky was gonna go with his gut, plus all areas south, not to mention the soft noises in the back of Clint’s throat; he was gonna call this a good thing.   


Clint looked satisfyingly dazed when Bucky finally pulled away; he was feeling a little weak in the knees himself.   


“So,” Bucky said, cupping Clint’s cheek and brushing green slime gently under his eye, “prince?”

“When you guys are quite finished…?” Steve said, sounding a little pink about it all.   


“Screw you, Steve, we’re royalty,” Clint said, grinning up at him, and pulled Bucky back down for another kiss.  



	8. Chapter 8

Clint looked a goddamn picture, sprawled on the hood of his car, head tipped back and eyes closed against the sinking orange sun. Steve would’ve tried to capture it, left it still and silent and beautiful, but Steve wasn’t here and Bucky didn’t know art. 

He knew what he liked. 

“So how far South is South, anyway?” 

Clint stretched like he was waking, drying out Bucky’s mouth with the arch of his back. He thought suddenly and vividly of morning-bitter kisses from that corner-curled mouth, and he shifted his weight away from the thoughts of a kid who looked barely out of his teens. 

He’d kinda liked the arrogance of it, the way Clint’d ditched the scrawled sign on the lay by he’d been stood on like Bucky’d be fool enough to take him wherever he wanted to go, but maybe that wasn’t why Bucky let him hitch a ride. Maybe it’d been a different reason entirely. 

“No clue,” said Clint, easy. “Guess I’ll know it when I see it.” 

“Figured you for college,” Bucky told him. “Heading for home.” 

Clint snorted and held his hand up, wiggling fingers casting fluttering shadows across his face. 

“Not the calluses of a college man,” he said, and his smile was tight in a way that was new and unwelcome. “Plus home moved on without me. Why, where you headed?” 

“South,” Bucky said, shrugged. “Guess I’ll know it when I see it.” 


	9. Chapter 9

There was a pile of stories about the new groundskeeper, and Clint believed maybe half of them. 

He'd go with auror, absolutely, 'cos there was no doubt he had the shape of a fighter. He stalked across the grounds with his robes barely buttoned, billowing out behind him in a way that made Clint's mouth go dry. Although that might have had something to do with the battered black leather it revealed. 

His wand was dark wood, and the rumour in the staff room was yew, but Clint didn't hold with that one. Yew was for posers, for dramatics and darkness, and the groundskeeper was almost painfully wary of drawing attention to himself. Kept out of the way of the rest of the staff, more was the pity, and if it wasn't for Clint's eyesight and the necessity of hanging around brooms he'd never catch a glimpse. 

Clint was half a DADA teacher, ranged spells instructor, assistant Quidditch coach. Tasha was his better half, supervisor, frequent tormentor. She always brought him the juiciest of latest rumours, laughed at his reactions, refused to tell him which ones she thought were true. 

It was said, she told him, hushed, that he'd trained a feral dragon to his command. That his first thestral was at thirteen, right after his first kill. That he'd been obliviated more often than anyone else living, and that some days he could barely even remember his own name. 

It was said, she told him, that he was a Slytherin. 

He rolled his eyes at her deadly serious tone - _she_ was a Slytherin, had been head girl to boot. Clint on the other hand, he'd trained in the wild, but when he'd transferred in in sixth year he was all about the badgers. 

And the boy he remembered - the boy who'd dropped off the radar half way through seventh year, who'd left him without anyone to silently laugh with in back of Fury's lectures, who'd had beautiful blue eyes behind too long dark hair, and had kissed with his whole body - that boy had been a badger right down to the bone.


	10. Chapter 10

It's a little sad how good Clint's got at faking sleep. 

Somehow the seat claiming kinda happened around them, Clint and Bucky being ushered from couch to beanbag to counter and back until one day everyone seemed to have settled themselves and left the oversized armchair - no way was it big enough to be a loveseat - for them to share. Clint had, for maybe five seconds, considered being the bigger man and taking the floor, but Clint is not the bigger man. Clint is a small man, the smallest man, petty and childish and a freaking ninja at revenge. 

Turns out he's got competition though, in pettiness, and for the first couple of movie nights it was all gritted teeth and braced elbows and the odd pointed whispered hiss. And then he'd twisted or sprained or bled out of something - he forgets, okay, they kind of blend - and Bucky had shifted his weight just right that suddenly the chair was perfection. 

They're too grown men and they shouldn't so much fit, especially with the solidity they're rocking. But if Clint leans back against Becky's shoulder, hooks his leg over both of Bucky's, and - magic. A little too comfy, if anything, because it wasn't long before Becky's supersoldier body heat was hanging little weights onto Clint's eyelids, exerting some kinda magnetic force on his head. Just before he dozed off, that first time, he felt something against his temple that felt suspiciously like a kiss, and - 

Well. It's a little sad how good Clint's got at faking sleep. 

The Pacific Rim credits are rolling, now, and Bucky eases himself out from under Clint. And then there's a moment's silence, no retreating footsteps, and Clint does his utmost not to hold his breath. 

The gentlest brush of Bucky's hair against his forehead, and the warmth of lips, this time against his ear. 

"When you're ready to talk about this, you just let me know," he says, amused, and Clint's somehow impossibly frozen by the sudden rush of heat.


	11. Chapter 11

“Tasha,” Clint says, taking his eyes off the water bottles he’s juggling for a second, “Tash, throw me a-” 

The noise as the bottles crash to the floor is loud enough to grab those few who’s attention he hadn’t already claimed for himself, but Clint doesn’t have time to revel in it - Bucky Barnes is heading his way, rolled up sleeves and heavy black boots and the inescapable march of death, seriously, and Clint swears loudly and vaults over the table behind him. His hand skids in a puddle of something he’d rather not know about, screwing his balance and sending him careening helplessly off the side of the lunch table, his shoulder painfully catching on the bench on his way to the floor. 

If life’s taught him anything, though, it’s that staying put to take it like a man does not a goddamn thing to make the punishment any easier. He’s up and running before Bucky’s rounded the squealing cheerleader whose lunch Clint had taken down with him, and for about ten blissful seconds Clint’s sure he’s made it, he’s escaped, he’s free… 

Then he’s hauled abruptly backwards by the hood on his sweater, pulled fast enough he can barely keep his feet, dragged into the bathroom and pushed up against the door. 

“Hey,” he says, tries on a grin, wilts in the face of Bucky’s… face. 

“What. The. Hell,” Bucky grinds out, and Clint briefly regrets every choice that’s brought him to this point. 

Mostly the vodka at the party the week before. Mostly the vodka, and his friendship with Nat. 

“Um,” Clint fumbles. 

“You can juggle,” Bucky says. Flat. 

This is a left turn from where Clint thought this conversation was going. He was expecting - he’s not sure. Something more violent, more insults, a sprinkle of homophobia maybe. Expecting some kind of revenge for the quick brush of drunk lips, the exchange of alcohol-laced breath. 

“I can juggle,” Clint confirms. 

“Great aim, too,” and the anger just doesn’t fit with the compliments, and Clint is confused. He nods warily. 

“Bet you could make that bottle go any place you wanted, huh?” Bucky’s got his arm braced against Clint’s chest now, pushing him back against the door, pushing their bodies closer together. He’s glaring fiercely at Clint, but Clint’s never had much of a self preservation instinct and he can’t do anything to stop his eyes sliding down to catch on Bucky’s mouth. 

“Fucking punk,” Bucky growls, and presses forward hard, his teeth catching on Clint’s lower lip as their mouths crush together. If it’s supposed to be a punishment it’s falling kinda short, and Clint whines in the back of his throat, trying to arch forward for more. Bucky pulls away, mouth wet and eyes dark, looking lost and a little confused for all of a second before he pushes Clint out of the way of the door. 

“Don’t fuck with me again,” he says, not looking at Clint, and shoves back out into the corridor, the door slamming shut behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continued in chapter 14


	12. Chapter 12

After long missions, long days and long nights, Clint - hard to wake at the best of times - could easily be mistaken for the living dead. He shambled into whichever of the common areas was closest, kept walking until he found something to lean on, and then whined pathetically until someone brought him coffee, or his eyes finally opened, whichever of those came first. 

After long missions, long days and long nights, Bucky found himself getting up strategically early. 

The first step was acknowledging you had a problem, right? 

Bucky tracked Clint through the whisper of sweatpants dragging along the floor, shuffling closer and closer until Clint bumped gently against his back, like a boat nudging up against a dock. He hummed happily, nose at the perfect height to rub gently against the nape of Bucky's neck, and then pressed a little closer, slumping down so his forehead resting against the back of Bucky's shoulder. 

"Mornin', sunshine," Bucky murmured, without enough of the usually careful quirk in his voice that'd turn it sarcastic. 

Clint turned his head to the side enough to mumble something that could be about mornings, something that involved lips in any case, moving enough that they brushed against Bucky's skin. The tiny adrenaline rush from it pulled his mouth up at the corners. 

It wasn't much, wasn't what he wanted, but it'd do for a first step.


	13. Chapter 13

“That’s a bad word,” a small, solemn voice said, and when Bucky turned around he was met with a small, solemn pair of eyes to match. Her blonde hair had been pulled into lumpy braids by someone with neither the skill nor the patience to do a good job of it, and the colour combinations suggested she’d had a lot of say in her outfit.

“It is,” Bucky agreed. He dropped the hammer, examined his hand and the skin that’d torn loose, then fished awkwardly in his pocket for a scrap of tissue or something. “I figured Russian’d be politer,” he said absently.

“Aunt Nat knows Russian,” the tiny human informed him, then turned on her heel, her rubber boots flapping around her calves as she headed back into the house next door. Bucky watched her go for a second, then shrugged and clanked down the ladder, vaguely hoping that ‘fully furnished’ somehow included band-aids.

“-leaving the house?” The voice was exasperated and doing a barely passable job at hiding the fond. “Katie Margaret Steven Barton…”

“I get more middle names when he’s madder,” blondie informed Bucky, and the guy in the ragged sweatpants and the purple hearing aids (and nothing else, and Bucky was trying so very very hard not to notice the lack of shirt) looked up to meet his eyes.

“Hey,” the guy said, awkward, and rubbed at the back of his head with the hand that was holding a battered and brightly coloured box. “So I guess we’re your new neighbours.”

“I guess,” Bucky said, and for lack of an alternative he waved awkwardly with the hand that had already bled through the clump of shredded tissue he’d pressed to it.

“Daddy-”

“On it.” Before Bucky could move he’d had his hand grasped by long calloused fingers, and he figured it for a handshake and was just about to reciprocate when the guy pulled away, leaving Bucky with -

“Fish?”

His neighbour patted the cartoon-covered band-aid fondly. “We’re pretty fond of Dory, right, squishy?”

It was Barton junior’s turn to grab Bucky’s hand, and this was more casual physical contact than Bucky’d had in longer than he’d care to admit.

“All better,” she said, satisfied, then smacked a kiss over the plaster before holding Bucky’s hand out to her father. The man looked up at Bucky then, apparently taking his raised eyebrow as something resembling consent, bent with a wicked little smirk to press his own mouth half against flesh.

The scrape of morning stubble went straight to Bucky’s dick.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continued from chapter 10.

Bucky’s tongue stroked across Clint’s, and he groaned satisfyingly deep in his chest when Clint’s hands dropped to his ass, pulling him forward so Clint could press against him. The soft noise was almost lost against the distant background noise of football practice, cheerleaders starting a routine over for the fifteenth time; Clint resolved to himself that the next one would be louder. 

In the interests of achieving goals, Clint pulled away - Bucky looked pleasingly dazed - and dropped to his knees. 

“Really Barton?” Bucky said, and there was something odd under the breathless. “Under the bleachers?” 

“It’s some kinda tradition, right?” Clint said, reaching forward to fumble with Bucky’s fly, but Bucky’s hand dropped quickly to grab his. “Babe?” 

Bucky was biting on his lip, looking uncertain, and Clint dropped back to sit on his heels, not sure entirely what the hell was going on. 

“We’re good, right?” Bucky asked, and the uncertainty in his tone was lodged sharp under Clint’s ribs. “We’re solid?” 

And Clint, who hadn’t yet met a moment he couldn’t stomp all over, said, “Since I’m down here, should I have brought a ring?” 

Bucky lifted his foot and pressed it into the centre of Clint’s chest so he toppled over backwards, and when Clint pressed up on his elbows there was something not good about Bucky’s smile. 

“What?” He asked. They hadn’t talked about it, but he’d thought - “you’re down for this, right?” 

Bucky tilted his head so his hair fell over his face, and Clint hated it when he did that, hated the imprecision of aid-filtered voices instead of the lips he was so used to reading. 

Bucky shrugged. 

“I dunno,” he said, flat and low. “Maybe a guy wants something a little special for his -” he fell silent, but there was no biting back the words that had to fit. 

“First - ?” Clint breathed, then, helpless, “but you’re -” 

Beautiful, he thought, and incredible, and everything, and how could people not - 

But somehow, what came out was none of these. 

“But you’re _you_ ,” Clint said, helpless, and it was somehow everything he meant and the worst possible thing he could have said. 

Bucky didn’t flinch, didn’t react, didn’t do anything but turn on his heel and stalk away, leaving Clint flat on his back with a muddy boot print over his heart.


	15. Chapter 15

Gentle lips touch the back of Clint’s neck, gentle but just firm enough to spark off heat in the stubble burn back there, which is - not new, maybe, but it’s sure as hell been a while. It’s still dim enough Clint figures it counts for night, that his night off rules are still in operation, so there’s no hesitation in arching his back and pressing his ass against someone’s seriously interested dick.   


He may or may not be entirely sober yet; may be in for a hell of a hangover either way. It’s not arrived yet, though, he’s just got the post-drunk lassitude, the clumsiness, the craving for touch.   


Clint reaches up to hook his arm around the man’s neck, registers the brush of long hair against his knuckles - and geez, this crush thing is getting out of control if he’s started picking up lookalikes - and buries the lower half of his face in the stale warmth of the pillow, hauling and shifting and hinting like hell until he’s covered in solid weight. He figures his mouth is better off muffled, since there’s only one name he’s interested in calling.   


The guy leans away long enough for Clint to let out an impatient groan, then squeezes a layer of slick along the crease of Clint’s ass before reaching awkwardly under him, giving Clint something to shove against as he lowers his weight and blankets him again.   


And it’s good, fuck, it’s good, it’s so much better than anything this simple should be, and the guy’s arching up so he can watch himself, his head tilted forward enough that long hair brushes against Clint’s shoulders, and Clint bites down on the goddamn pillow so he doesn’t ruin this with something he shouldn’t say.   


“Ah fuck,” the guy groans, low, and something adrenaline-fueled and fucking terrified shivers to life in Clint’s belly. “Fuck, Clint.”

He knows that voice, okay, he knows the low growl of it, the way Brooklyn pulls at the vowels, and even as he’s coming messily into the hollow of Bucky’s hand he’s aware that he’s fucked up, there’s no coming back, he’s broken every night off rule he’s ever had.   



	16. Chapter 16

Tony was below, the flash of his repulsors causing crazy shadows when combined with the tangled brambles that had swallowed Steve’s apartment building. Clint hauled himself a little higher - feet placed carefully to avoid the thorns that were longer than any knife he’d risk juggling - and finally saw a clear enough path for the grappling arrow.   


It was a slow ascent - had to be, with all the criss-crossed branches - and he didn’t escape entirely unscathed (aw, pants, no). But eventually he was able to haul himself onto the fire escape outside the apartment next door to Steve’s.   


Poor Mrs Ortiz had missed the couch by bare inches when she’d collapsed into enchanted sleep. Clint grabbed a throw pillow and tucked it gently under her head before letting himself out into the hallway, picking the lock to the left.   


There wasn’t much he’d be able to do, obviously, ‘cos everyone knew how these stories go. Tony would battle his way through the aggressive foliage, and he’d gently kiss Steve - who was looking exactly like a Disney princess ought to, even in the flannel pants and iron man shirt - and everyone would wake up and live happily ever after.   


But Clint had just had to check, okay, see Bucky’s grumpy-cat face even in sleep, awkward and uncomfortable where he was curled against the wall. He’d had to make sure because there were certain responsibilities even with fuck-buddies, especially fuck-buddies who might sort of be concealing occasional one-sided feelings underneath the target on their shirt.   


Clint sprawled out with his back against the wall, one knee hitched up, and leaned his shoulder against Bucky’s.   


“Hey man,” he said, “it’s cool, Tony’ll be here soon.” And, impulse, he leaned over to press a kiss to the line of Bucky’s clenched jaw. It twitched against his lips.   


“Ha!” Tony yelled, triumphant, over the comms. “What the hell did I say? The plants couldn’t stand up to the suit, and they were clearly anchoring the spell.” He snorted, dismissively. “Who the hell thought that ‘true love’s kiss’ was gonna work, seriously?”   


Clint actually felt his heart drop into his stomach, feeling stupid and small and royally screwed. (Aw. Love. No.)  


“Guess we’re done here, then,” Clint said, flat, into his comm, and looked away from sleepily confused gray eyes.   



	17. Chapter 17

“Think you’re suffering under some misapprehensions, here, Barton.” 

“Yeah?” Clint folded his hands behind his back, leaning against the wall with one foot propped against it. He had to tilt his head back a little to meet Bucky’s eyes, and that felt all kinds of good. 

Bucky was wearing a grin that belonged to a man from the past, cocksure and full of promise. He was leaning in, metal arm braced, and Clint had had sex that he was pretty sure didn’t feel as good as weeks of waiting, as the gentle heat of Bucky’s fingers resting lightly on his hip. 

“Don’t get me wrong,” Bucky said, laughter threaded all through his voice, “the dates you’ve been takin’ me on have been sweet as pie.” 

“So what’m I doing wrong?” Clint asked, his automatic reflexive fuck-up acceptance held at bay by the brush of Bucky’s thumb over the soft cotton of his shirt. 

“You’re bein’ a perfect gentleman,” Bucky said. His grin turned wicked and he ducked in, pressing his mouth to Clint’s and kissing him with a dirty little slide of tongue that was nothing Clint was expecting. Maybe he’d been basing a little too much on the way Steve blushed on movie nights, not enough on the things Bucky’s hips could do on the dance floor. 

The little sound he let out when Bucky pulled away wasn’t anything he could help, but Bucky wasn’t complaining if the way his fingers slid under the hem of Clint’s shirt was any indication. 

“People were fuckin’ in the forties, Barton,” Bucky murmured in his ear. “Didn’t even always wait ‘til the third date.”


	18. Chapter 18

Cold hummed through the bones of Bucky, even the ones he didn't have any more. Leaving the climate-controlled tower for more than a moment pulled winter into the long lines of him to settle and gnaw, but staying inside had him pacing and snapping and avoiding the stress in Steve's blue eyes. 

The Avengers - whatever fragile fluctuating grouping that covered this week - spent evenings watching movies, arguing over reality TV, building tenuous links between disparate tastes. Bucky spent evenings mostly aching under blankets. 

Three weeks into winter his door opened without warning and Bucky - expecting Steve - was startled by the gentle jangling of dog tags and the sudden weight that jumped up onto his bed. The dog, golden and one-eyed and warmly musty, nosed under his metal wrist and determinedly wiggled up the bed, panting in a wide-mouthed grin once he had Bucky arranged to his satisfaction. Bucky was bemused, sure, but it was difficult to hold out against body heat and the gentle thump of a tail against his leg. He scratched his fingers through golden fur and bore having his face washed with reasonable grace, a fair exchange for the warmth that gently pulled at his pain. 

Barton would have been his first guess, in fact - the dog's collar was a shocking shade of purple and instead of a name on its tag it had a lovingly sharpied slice of pizza. It was odd, though, that he didn't flinch upright at the first hint of the man's presence in his room. 

"Sorry," Barton whispered, and the tail thumps against Bucky's leg increased in energy and speed. "Sorry, I'll get this monster out of your hair." 

"No problem," Bucky rasped and rolled away, stretching himself out against the length of his bed. Barton stared, wide-eyed, then a flush of colour washed over his cheeks and he buried his face against the top of the dog's head and smacked a kiss there. 

The jealousy, Bucky did not expect.


	19. Chapter 19

Bucky only half-woke when Clint rolled out of bed, the vibrating and flashing of his phone signalling a call to Assemble that Bucky still hadn’t been cleared for. He’d rolled over and buried his head under his pillow, barely registering the brush of a kiss on his shoulder before Clint headed for the shower.

He made sure to send a smug picture by text, though, curled up and snug and lines and lines of _hahahahahahahaha_.

So the loud thump on the outside of the bedroom door wasn’t so much a surprise, and he couldn’t help grinning when he opened it to find a messily cut construction paper heart pinned to the door with an arrow and decorated with Clint’s messy scrawl.

**HAPPY VALENTINES ASSHOLE**

Bucky grinned, checking out the angle, and yup - there was the yelp overhead, the resounding clang, right on cue. Rigging the vents with heart-shaped confetti had been a pain in the ass - and had led to the promise of unspecified favours for Tony - but it had definitely been worth it.


	20. Chapter 20

“No,” Bucky whispered, horror struck. He stepped back automatically and Steve’s hands came up to hold his shoulders, the support grounding and settling and allowing him to catch his breath.   


“Buck?”  


Bucky whirled around on his heel, staring up at Steve, who looked worried at the stress that was no doubt clear on his face. 

“I am not going in there,” he insisted, keeping his voice steady, trimmed fingernails biting into the palm of his hand. “I am not going in there and you can’t make me.”   


“Okay,” Steve said seriously, taking hold of Bucky’s elbows and backing up, “that’s okay, Bucky, we can -” he was looking over Bucky’s shoulder, bemused, like there was absolutely _nothing wrong_ with the scene taking place in the kitchen. Like it was _perfectly normal_ to walk in for breakfast and see the object of his unrequited feelings in heart-covered boxers with tiny golden wings strapped onto his back. 

“His _abs_ , Steven,” Bucky groaned, almost all the way under his breath, and the stress faded from Steve’s eyes to be replaced by wicked amusement. But his grip didn’t falter, he kept towing Bucky gently away, and no matter what else happened Steve was always gonna be his best guy.   


“Morning, Clint,” Steve said over Bucky, laughter clear in the tone of his voice. “Nice wings.”  


“Lost a bet,” Clint said easily. “Happy Valentines Cap, Bucky.”   


“ _Shit_ ,” Bucky hissed. “He _saw me?”_  


Steve choked on a laugh. 

“Pretty sure he just blew a kiss to your ass,” he said.   



	21. Chapter 21

“I just want it stated for the record,” Tony said, holding his hands up, “that I regret all of my choices. All of them. And if that’s going to be my obituary, I’m - fairly okay with that.”   


Steve looked up from the coffee table where he was sitting cross-legged, conscientiously responding to ever single wax-crayon decorated Valentines card from the sack Dummy had dragged in. Bucky did not look up. A lot of the cards had come with chocolates.

“Everything okay, Tony?” Steve asked, concerned.  


“Never,” he responded, sauntering over to just behind where Bucky sat, “ _never_ make a bet with Barton. Never.”   


Bucky refused, okay, he refused to get stupid over a reference to the guy’s _name_. He jammed another salted caramel into his mouth. 

Steve blinked up at Tony. “Okay?”  


Tony took a deep breath. “Well, Cap, it’s been real. We who are about to die salute you.” He managed a passable salute and then, before Bucky could react, ducked forward and pressed a tickly kiss against his cheek. Bucky let out a chocolate-muffled growl, and Tony darted backwards. 

“Clint says happy Valentines,” he yelped, “all debts are discharged, Jarvis has it on video.”   


Bucky turned back around and slumped down on the couch, blush as bright as a stupid crayon heart. 


	22. Chapter 22

Clint pulls away from the kiss, a little awkward and uncertain, the flowers he’s holding floppy and last minute and still enough. 

“I dunno,” Clint says, and rubs the back of his neck the way he always does when he’s uncomfortable, awkward, out of his depth. “I guess I usually start relationships when it’s getting kinda cold, and I’ve usually fucked up by this point?”  


“You haven’t fucked up,” Bucky says, and Clint spreads his hands like _how,_ like _why_ , like he has no freaking clue what Bucky could possibly see in him. “Just don’t leave when the sun comes back, huh?” 

“You look good in sunlight,” Clint tells him, tells the Winter Soldier, like it’s nothing and unimportant and like any other compliment, like _good waffles_ or _nice shirt_.   



	23. Chapter 23

There was a heap of ugly purple plaid on Clint’s couch, and somewhere inside of it he was fairly sure there was a lethal assassin but all points of ingress were blocked by balls of tissue. The glimpse he’d got of Bucky’s fever-bright eyes, the tip of his rosy nose, had been freaking _adorable_ , but unfortunately he hadn’t been able to keep that to himself and all signs of life had retreated into the huddle in protest. 

_help_ he texted Natasha _i dont no how to fix him_

_you are an idiot_ was the response, which, fair. But in his defense, he’d never really had a sick day. Barney hadn’t ever really been the caring type, and he’d kinda got used to either a) dealing or b) crawling away to (possibly) die. He’d had broken days, and internal bleeding days, and really-freaking-bruised days, but this was a new one on him and he didn’t have the frame of reference to know what worked. He’d always kinda liked, though, when Tasha cared enough to press a gentle kiss to his forehead, somewhen that no one would see, so he figured that was a decent place to start. 

(It was made by Hersheys, though, and he whipped it through a tiny gap in the blanket fort from the other side of the room, ‘cos fevers were sweaty and Bucky was gross).


	24. Chapter 24

Clint is a happy slump of drunken archer on the couch, a half-gone beer dangling from his fingers. He's got his feet in Wanda's lap and as a result his toenails are bright purple and glittering. He keeps wiggling them in delight, watching them sparkle and catch the light. 

Days like this are good days. There's rain hammering against the penthouse windows, and it makes everything feel a little warmer and cosier inside. A little bubble of golden-lit awesome that's settled into his belly and keeps escaping in little grins. 

Lucky's at Katie-Kate's, and Clint's never been particularly good at lonely, so he's staying at the tower tonight. There's a film playing, something with blandly good looking people and explosions, and he's kinda missed the room filling up around him. Steve and Sam are tucked up all tight together, and Tony's kneeling by the coffee table with a screwdriver and pieces of the remote control spread out in front of him. Vision has somehow managed to squeeze into the end of the couch - his arm may actually be inside the couch, at this point - and Clint is so filled up with contentment that it actually takes him a second to notice that he's buried his fingers in Bucky's hair. 

Bucky's sitting on a throw pillow, leaning back against the couch just in petting distance. And Clint feels there should've been - he would've noticed sooner if there'd been a reaction, if Bucky had stiffened or pulled away like he usually does when there's touching. Instead he's got his eyes half closed and he's leaned his head back into Clint's space, and it feels like some weird kind of honour. Like he's won at something. Life, maybe. 

"Hey, Buck," Clint murmurs, just on the edge of what can be heard, and Bucky's mouth quirks up in response. Clint brushes his fingers against the soft skin behind Bucky's ear, the place he'd press kisses if he was a little braver.


	25. Chapter 25

The storage closet door opens and Bucky flings up his arm against the light, the sudden movement nearly unbalancing him. He's expecting to be hauled out by his ear 'cos the nurses here are brutal, but instead the guy steps in and pulls the door closed behind him, sliding down the wall and settling in with his legs overlapping Bucky's. 

It's dark but not black as pitch, the gentle green light of a smoke detector at least giving edges to things. Bucky squints at the grainy nothingness curiously. 

"Physio?" The guy asks, sympathetically. 

"Therapy," Bucky croaks, his voice rusted away. He can almost hear the wince in response. 

"Then I respect your life choices," he's told. A rubber sole nudges his shin gently. It kinda feels like understanding. 

Something buzzes in the darkness, and there's a fumbling and then the bright flare of a phone. The light reflects off pale hair, a stubborn chin, way more shoulder than any reasonable person would try to fit into a storage closet. Bucky's seen him before, pushing wheelchairs and hauling patients around, but never been close enough to learn his name. 

He kinda thinks he'd like to know it, which is - new. 

"The orderlies are approaching, man," the guy says, getting to his feet, "the fortress of solitude is about to get seriously overcrowded." 

Bucky curses, half under his breath, and almost refuses the hand that's offered out of principle. There's no way he's letting this guy see him struggle, though, his balance and movements still fucked up by his arm. He pulls himself to his feet and winds up pressed closer than he'd meant, the body heat intrusive and unfamiliar. 

"Don't worry," the guy says, "I won't tell them you were hiding."

"Why the hell else would I be in here?" Bucky asks, sardonic. 

Those broad shoulders shrug. 

"Seven minutes in heaven?" 

Bucky thinks of the shoulders, thinks of the grin he's seen across hospital corridors, and how he's heard the man sing on his rounds before, warm and low. 

"I'm game if you are," he says, and somewhere in the darkness he finds his grin. 

"Aw," the guy whines, "ethics," like he's personally inconvenienced by morality. 

Bucky pushes forward, presses a kiss off-centre to a lightly-stubbled cheek. He runs a hand through the guy's light hair, rumpling it tellingly, and yanks the purple scrubs top sideways. 

When he pushes the door open he turns and bites down on a laugh. The orderly is blushing and rumpled and biting down on his lower lip, looking thoroughly debauched. 

"What the hell," the guy breathes, his name tag introducing him as Clint. 

"Sorry pal," Bucky says, summoning a fraction of his old swagger, "I got a reputation to maintain."


	26. Chapter 26

Bucky pretends to eat Tiny Princess Thor's tiny princess fingers to the sound of her shrieking laughter, which is, y'know, totally fine. Clint didn't actually need his heart, anyway, so it's not a problem that it's flopped out of his chest to land with a sad splat at Bucky's feet. Clint grins for the seven hundredth Super Selfie - $5 a pop, all proceeds to the local children's hospital - and then heads over to the grill. Apparently there's a space inside him to fill. 

It turns out hotdogs do not, actually, cure all ills, no matter the amount of relish. So Clint finds a spot that's quickest to lose the light that's slowly fading out of the sky, tilts his head back against the trunk of a bunting-wrapped tree, and sighs the sigh of the world-weary and love-lorn. It's a tune that comes easy to his lips. 

(Bungee cord is maybe what he needs, 'cos he always gives his heart away too quickly, and it's never particularly timely about coming back.) 

"Hey," a low voice says, and Clint hitches a grin into place with a block and tackle. 

"Tired of the adoration, Barnes?" 

Bucky shrugs, his shoulders loosed from the tension they normally carry. 

"Not sure it's deserved," he says, taking his share of the tree. Clint elbows him in the side. 

"Sure it is," he says, matter-of-fact enough to build a university on. "You're a gold-standard genuine hero, Buck, nobody doubts that but you." 

Bucky shifts his weight, turns to the side, rests his shoulder against the tree. Clint figures it's safer to keep staring up at the stars. 

"You're a goddamn prince, Barton," he says, "and you don't get told that nearly enough." 

Clint risks a glance right, regrets it immediately. Mentally kisses his heart goodbye, 'cos he's not sure this time he's getting it back.


	27. Chapter 27

“James Buchanan Barnes you goddamn son of a fuck!”  


Steve hunched his shoulders automatically, the last bite of pancake falling off his fork. Bucky, unfazed, unerringly stabbed it and shoved it in his mouth with a sticky grin. 

“Of all the assholes I could’ve fallen in love with -” Clint’s voice faded out a little, muffled by distance, then rang out with renewed strength, “ - smarmy good-for-nothing handsome fuck-face rat bastard!”   


Clint thumped down the stairs like he bore an individualised and long-held grudge against each and every one of them. 

“Conniving, corkscrew-twisty, thieving dick,” Clint growled as he rounded the bottom of the stairs and came over to where they were sitting. “Morning, Steve.”   


“Hey, Clint,” Steve said, hesitant.   


“Morning, Clint,” Bucky echoed with an utterly relaxed and sunny grin.   


“Fuck you, you fuckin’ fuck.” Clint took a step closer to Bucky, and all sorts of never particularly buried instincts reared up in Steve, had him half out of his chair before he registered the care with which Clint slid his hand into Bucky’s hair, the way Bucky pressed up into the kiss like he was breaking the surface, like this was all he needed to live. Steve focused down on his mug like it held the secrets of the universe, his ears turning pink. He’d seen Bucky in more compromising situations, of course, but this was - well, Steve was pretty sure this was how Bucky looked when he was in love, which felt like an imposition somehow to watch. 

Clint pulled away slowly, his thumb running across Bucky’s cheek and a bemused, hopelessly adoring look on his face. 

“Morning, asshole,” he said, in the gentlest tone Steve’d ever heard from him. “Don’t steal my fucking coffee.”   



	28. Chapter 28

"Sorry," Bucky says. "This is your spot, I'll - "

The archer, Barton, shrugs and drops down next to him, close enough to touch. He drums his heels against the giant glowing A and seems willing to share silence with him, which - generous as they all have been - is not something anyone else has been willing to let him have.

Bucky lets out a long breath after a second, fog drifting through the clear air. Barton cocks his head a little - an unspoken signal that he's listening.

"I just - Steve keeps trying to fix me - " he gestures, vaguely, in the air by his head, "and Tony keeps trying to fix me -" another gesture, this time with the metal arm - "and I just - "

"Wanna make your own stuff work," Barton finishes for him, and Bucky could kiss him, seriously, for getting that 'broken beyond repair' doesn't mean useless, or done.


	29. Chapter 29

"Why, you scared?"

Barton grinned, blond hair darkened and plastered to his forehead by the relentless storm, goose pimples visible along the length of his bare arms.

"Oh hell yes," he said, unashamed, "this is possibly the worst idea we've ever fuckin' had!"

"Ask me about trains sometime." He took a couple steps forward, looked over the edge, swallowed hard. "Ah, fuck, that's a long way down."

"Screw it," Barton said, suddenly determined, the hard line of his jaw tight as he drew even. "Bet I can come up with a worse one."

"Yeah?"

"Pretty sure," he said.

The rain was a great equaliser, made everything just as cold and wet and clammy as everything else, and Barton's hand brushing against his jaw was nothing much to talk about. His lips were cold against Bucky's, but cold like a stomach depth shiver of terrified anticipation, not like ice, and when they parted slightly the slick heat was like nothing he could describe. Barton's hand tangled in Bucky's soaking hair, frozen against the barest warmth still clinging to the back of his neck, and Bucky shivered against him, his eyes flickering open as Barton pulled away.

"Worst idea?"

"Why?" Bucky asked, then cleared his throat and tried again. "Why, you scared?"

"Oh hell yeah," Barton said, heat in his eyes and a wide grin on his face, like falling was a thrill ride and he couldn't wait to get started.

"Screw it," Bucky said, pushed forward and leapt.


	30. Chapter 30

"Well if you weren't so damn reckless," Steve yelled.

"If you didn't have such a flagpole up your ass," Bucky snarled back, fists clenching.

"Ooh," an amused voice said, "now kiss."

Barton was leaning against the wall with his arms folded, a smirk on his face. The Widow was reclining on the couch, and Tony was doing his best innocent face from the kitchen counter.

"Legolas - " he said, before Steve cut across him.

"Excuse me?"

"Best way to end an argument."

Bucky arched an eyebrow, amused at the appalled expression on Steve's face as much as anything.

"How much?" he said, and Barton's smirk spread into the bright grin that yeah, Bucky'd noticed.

"Even hundred."

Bucky tipped his head, considering.

"Sixty-forty?"

Barton's blue eyes tracked downward lazily, and Bucky folded his arms, cocked a hip.

"I'm good with fifty-fifty," Barton returned.

"Specific wording?" Bucky asked. Steve was looking as confused as all hell, Tony was looking increasingly pissed, and Natasha was laughing softly with a hand over her eyes.

"Clint..."

"Helpfully vague," Barton told him, and Bucky grinned.

"Great," he said. "Fight's over," he tossed over his shoulder as he strode across the room, plastering himself against Barton's frankly amazing body.

"Seriously, Steve," Tony whined, as Barton bit down on Bucky's lip, "you couldn't have punched him?"


	31. Chapter 31

Bucky rips his mouth away, gasping, shoving forward so he can press his forehead into the crook of Clint’s neck and - not incidentally - pulling hard at the hair that’s still tangled between Clint’s fingers. 

“Harder,” Bucky rasps out, “fuck, _harder_.” 

Clint obliges, because he’s fucked, and he’s fucking, and he’s fucking _in love_. 

“Buck,” he groans, and hey he’s just a fricative in the wrong direction; it’s easy to pretend it’s just meaningless, just swearing, just nothing at all. 

(Maybe tomorrow’ll be the day Bucky lets Clint kiss him, maybe tomorrow Bucky’ll let himself deserve that.)


	32. Chapter 32

“You know all I want is for you to be happy. I just - I don’t get it, Buck,” Steve said plaintively, and Bucky regarded him, licking peanut butter off the edge of his knife.

“There a reason you have to?” He plated up the sandwich and grabbed two sodas, carrying them through to the coffee table by the couch and settling himself into a nest of throw pillows he’d never admit he’d carefully arranged. (Maybe throw pillows just accreted around him, okay? Maybe he was a throw pillow pearl.)

“I just don’t want you settling for something ‘cos you don’t think you can have something else.” Steve hadn’t circled the couch entirely so he was just a big uncomfortable presence in the corner of Bucky’s eyes. “I want you to be happy, Buck, and that always used to be -” Steve shrugged. “Dames, I guess. And dancing.”

“Huh,” Bucky said thoughtfully through his mouth full, “you think he can dance?”

“That’s not my point,” Steve snapped, and that kinda made Bucky snap too.

“Why not? That’s what counts, right? I ain’t the guy I used to be, Stevie, and the guy I am now thinks this is working just fine.”

The elevator pinged and Steve - who had opened his mouth to let another damned fool thing fall out of it - snapped it closed again when Clint stepped out. Bucky couldn’t have stopped the sappy grin that spread over his face if you paid him, and Clint returned it with interest.

He sauntered over, and just before he got to the couch he smacked a kiss to the palm of his hand while Bucky did the same, then they slapped their palms together, Bucky folding his fingers around Clint’s hand and tugging him over the back of the couch.

See, now his nest was perfect. Clint couldn’t always do contact, but he was still a warmth all along Bucky’s side, still the first person Bucky would want there.

“There something you wanted, Cap?” Clint asked, but Steve took a second to react, his eyes on Bucky’s face and his own expression some combination of lost, confused, happy.

"Nah," he said after a second. "Guess not."


	33. Chapter 33

Clinton Francis Barton is 33 years old today. Today! Like the sun, the sun, no wait. The earth! ‘Swhat, 'swhat he meant, the earth, it’s on its 33th time around the sun since he was born, that’s so many miles. So many! Bucky, Buck, so many miles Bucky.

Bucky grins at him like the sun and agrees it’s a lot of miles.

So many, Clint reaffirms, and that was maybe a bad gesture to make because now he has whiskey on his sleeve. He knocks back the rest of it and puts his glass back on the table, closing one eye so the table’ll stop swaying, then unbuttons maybe a hundred buttons and gets stuck in his shirt. Bucky is next to him on one side and Tasha is next to him on another side but somehow it’s bird boy who helps him when he’s plaintively calling. Shit, maybe he’s speaking bird. Is he speaking bird?

Sam ruffles his hair and tells him he’s speaking as good English as he usually does, which makes Tasha laugh for some reason, and Clint beams at her 'cos her laugh is like salted caramel.

Bucky sits back down next to him, which is kinda confusing since he was already sitting? Next to him? But oh, he has beer, he is Clint’s favourite. Clint tells him this, serious and low, then flashes him the biggest smile that’ll fit on his face 'cos only the best for his Bucky.

Aw, Bucky says, and fuck, and Capmerica is laughing at one of 'em but Clint’s not sure which. Whatever, Steve is a sun lion, he doesn’t get to judge the birds and the beasts and the Buckys. Clint leans into Bucky, solidarity, and Bucky groans something about arms that sets Steve off laughing again.

Clint had a centre of gravity once. Like he could walk on a thing. Wire thing. He could do that. He could do that alla time. But someone’s messed with the gravity in this bar 'cos Clint’s sliding sideways and down and into Bucky’s shoulder, just perfect for leaning. Bucky bends his head all around until he’s smiling down at Clint, a small and soft and kinda secret smile that Clint leans up and kisses, maybe a little harder than he meant 'cos he’s taking on gravity, here.

Bucky pulls back, and someone whistles, and Clint’d maybe worry except the smile’s spread now. Hey, Bucky says, all soft and fond, maybe that’s something they can try again sometime when Clint’ll remember it.

Clint’s pretty sure he’ll remember it - he’s been waiting, okay, he’s been wanting for months - but he nods agreeably and leans back into Bucky’s shoulder, trusting him to hold him steady as the earth spins a little further around the sun.


	34. Chapter 34

Bucky started sneaking him these small sly sidelong glances, and it took Clint a little while to catch on. Nothing outright, nothing he could point to and prove he wasn't crazy, just these smiles that settled in his stomach and set his brain to working it out.

He got a look like he was out of his tree when he leaned next to Bucky against the counter in the kitchen, various Avengers scattered around the room in various states of awareness and dress. So okay, this thing had rules, and the first one was like fight club, and no one else was allowed to know.

Clint upped the ante immediately, 'cos papa had raised a gamblin' man. He dropped Bucky a wink from behind Steve's broad back, and the way Bucky immediately choked on his coffee had to mean Clint was winning, right? Straight out of the gate.

The next move was a hint of body heat as Bucky leaned a little closer in the darkness of a movie night. Clint retaliated with an unsubtle brush of fingers as he made sure to lunge for popcorn at the same time. With the solid hand Bucky rested on his thigh as he pushed himself to his feet, Clint was calling that one a draw.

The heat of Bucky's hand in the small of his back on the way out of a meeting left Clint tied up in knots he couldn't understand, let alone start to untangle, so Clint followed him down to the canteen. Slouched unapologetically, their knees pressed together safely out of sight, but Bucky's smile visible for as long as Clint stayed.

Bucky ruffled Clint's hair in the back of the quinjet; Clint stole gum from Bucky's pocket and grinned into the back of his shoulder. Bucky warmed Clint's hands while they waited in anticipation of a fight; Clint, daring, hooked their pinkies together while Fury yelled after it.

It wasn't until Bucky cornered him in an empty corridor, pushing in close and eyes dropping to Clint's mouth, that Clint realised that maybe this wasn't gay chicken. That maybe they were heading for something real.

(And when Bucky kissed him, Clint gave his all to the kiss he gave back, because all of a sudden this had always been true.)


	35. Chapter 35

"Are you FUCKING kidding me?"

Wow. It's like Bucky is narrating Clint's internal monologue. He finally conquered the Dog Cops season finale just as the sun was coming up, and now whatever the fuck the yardarm is the sun is for certain not over it and Clint's being woken by a shrieking assassin. He groans and considers burying his head under the pillow, but Bucky's swearing is getting progressively more distressed, and for reasons beyond him Clint kind of cares about that.

He rolls over, blinks up at the ceiling for a second, blindly fumbles for his aids and blearily hooks them in. Then he flops onto his side, places a supportive hand on Bucky's knee, and aims his sleepy groan in the vague direction of sympathetic.

"I told 'em Hawkeye," Bucky says, shaking his tablet angrily but belied by the disappointment in his tone. "How did they fuck up this bad?"

Clint caterpillar wriggles up against the pillows, blinks until the screen comes into focus.

CUPID'S ARROW THAWS WINTER SOLDIER! The headline screams, and under that is a picture of - oh, shit - of Bucky laughing with _Katie_.

Clint snorts, somewhere messy between hysterical and appalled, and claps a hand over his eyes like anything less than brain bleach will work at this point.

"Shit, Clint," Bucky says, "I'm sorry, I thought we could finally wear our rings out, I didn't mean to -"

"This is the best thing I have ever seen," Clint says, still half muffled under his hand, "holy fuck I can't wait to tell our future kids."

"Our -?" Bucky's voice is kinda faint, and when Clint finally lowers his hand, his gobsmacked face matches it.

"Like we're not gonna," Clint says.

"Our -?" Bucky repeats, still kinda lost, but this time with a slow dawning smile.

"Happy anniversary," Clint says, "best anniversary present ever." And maybe the kiss he presses to Bucky's lips is a little distracted, what with picturing the look on Katie-Kate's face when she sees this shit, but he's got a lifetime to improve on it.


	36. Chapter 36

Barton looked like a different man entirely in his sober gentleman's coat and slyly purple waistcoat. There was practically nothing of the mischievous archer in him, smiling in shirtsleeves, mocking James' use of a pistol rather than a 'weapon of skill' as though his missing an arm was an inconvenience only, and a minor one at that.

Barton stood, now, behind Miss Rushman. He was braced at her back as though to shoulder the world for her, without expectation that she should ever need him to. They made a fine pair, her sunset-touched hair contrasting most pleasingly with his pale dawn, and James felt a twist in his stomach that suggested he'd had hopes rather more developed than he'd allowed himself to recognise.

It was as well he'd never indulged in his inversion. Never taken Barton up on his offensively casual address, his beautifully self-mocking smiles, the impossible temptation of the notch of his throat that James ought never to have seen. Had he ever pressed, or leaned, or felt more than the barest hint of heat -

Had James surrendered and tasted Barton's mouth, he should have been quite ruined. He was certain of it.


	37. Chapter 37

Clint is curled up in the corner of the couch reading something brightly coloured, and Bucky's been watching him for the past twenty minutes. Not intentional, and not overt, but something about the vulnerable skin of Clint's bare feet makes it tough to look away.

He's choosing not to acknowledge the slow growing smile on the widow's face, but it's a relief when she yawns, stretches, gets to her feet.

"Night," she says, gliding over to the couch, circling it so she's facing Bucky before she bends to press her lips to the side of Clint's head. He hasn't got his ears in so he doesn't react verbally, but he presses automatically up against the kiss, clearly confused but so content he's practically purring.

Natasha meets Bucky's eyes, damned feline smirk in place, challenging him to do something about it. Claim his territory, maybe.

Bucky glares at her, and her eyes narrow. She slips her hand into Clint's hair, tugging a little as she ruffles it, and Clint's eyes slide shut in pleasure. Bucky clenches his fist, involuntary.

Challenge fucking accepted.


	38. Chapter 38

Bucky pulls open the door, still half asleep, and is immediately greeted with a grinning archer, wired and vibrating and inexplicably floury. Shit.

"Fuck, Clint -" he kinds feels bad for the way his tone makes the other guy droop, but Clint plus kitchens is a recipe for fire and fury and possibly maiming.

"Look," Clint says, "I tried, and therefore no one can criticise me."

"Yeah?" Bucky says, heading for the bathroom and the med kit he keeps there. "And how often does that work out for you?"

"So far not even one time," Clint says, regaining his sunny grin. He regards the med kit and huffs a thoughtful breath. "Y'know, I should probably be offended by this."

"There a reason you're not?"

"Super soldier healing," Clint says, and does a little shimmy as he spins on his heel, and not for the first time Bucky remembers that the band-aids are purple and subtlety's never exactly been his thing.

Bucky takes in a couple deep breaths as he follows Clint out into the common area, hitching his ratty boxers up as he goes. There's no trace of smoke in the air, which is reassuring; maybe FRIDAY crashed out the ovens in time. There is something, though, something sweet and warm and comforting that smells somehow like home should.

"My tenants are reconsidering the benefits of Tracksuits," Clint tells him over his shoulder. "Three fire alarms this week, five the week before. But I think I've got it?"

They round the corner into the kitchen and it's a mess, sure, but in the usual powdered surfaces and used up bowls kind of way. Nothing's obviously broken, or mutating, or on fire. And on the table are a couple trays of cinnamon rolls, lumpy and misshapen and smelling like heaven, and the growl of Bucky's stomach sets Clint off grinning down at his hands.

"Those are my favourites," Bucky says blankly, and Clint's pale skin is pretty perfect for showing off the faint blush that joins his grin. He shrugs one shoulder.

"Yeah, I heard you telling Steve."

Wait.

"You... made these for me?"

Another shrug. "I tried, anyway."

"Fuck, Clint -" Bucky drops the med kit, fuck the med kit, and grabs a handful of Clint's shirt, right over the streaks of flour that are decorating his hip. He yanks him close, inelegant and stumbling, and tastes the powdered sugar at the corner of his mouth, eases Clint's lips open, tastes warmth and comfort and something like home.


	39. Chapter 39

Bucky sticks a foot between Clint’s. Clint trips, flails, regains his balance, detours around a small unmoving child, manages to maintain coffee integrity throughout - then pours the first sip down his chest ‘cos the lid’s not on right. Jesus, this guy. 

“I was so proud,” Clint says, mournful, and is he seriously still doing this? “I was so proud I got two, okay, I’ve seen her give one before basically every time but Hot Piercings-”

“Please tell me you are not calling her that. I’m telling Steve if you call her that,” Bucky says, offended on the barista’s behalf. 

“- only gives two out in special cases,” Clint continues, unmoved. “And then you come along, with your _hair_  and your _eyes_  and your _sex glare_  -”

Bucky chokes on his coffee. 

“- and three. Three, just like that. Fuck you, Sex Glare.” 

“No,” Bucky says, stern and implacable and all that shit he learned in the army, ‘cos there is no way he’s letting that goddamn nickname slide. 

“ _Three_ ,” Clint sulks, half under his breath, and Bucky rolls his eyes and grabs the side of Clint’s head, pulling him in so he can lay one on his stubbled cheek. It makes his lips tingle. 

“There,” he says. “Even. Good enough?” 

Clint looks thoughtful for a second, his eyes kinda sparkling in the light. 

“Could be better,” he says, and Bucky matches his grin. Jesus, this guy. 


	40. Chapter 40

Feeling smaller than other guys has never done Clint much good.

His childhood was not a fucking kind one and he was quick, quickest to learn to climb. The shelves, the fire escape, the top of the goddamn refrigerator, he saw best from a distance because he had to, but nowhere in their apartment was tall enough; the circus was a revelation.

Still, no matter how high he climbed, people around never stopped making him feel small, and nothing good ever came from that. He never got the growth spurt that circus teens promised him, staying stocky and low to the ground, like Barney, like his dad (and even then, even then climbing hadn't goddamn helped, and he'd learned - how he'd fucking learned - that he didn't like to feel small). So instead he built on what the good lord gave him. Clint trained and fought and learned and aimed, and the name was half a joke and halfway fucking feared, once the circus was replaced by SHIELD.

For a while, Clint felt like a new man.

But SHIELD gave him up to a team of superhero misfits, practically every one of them his height and more, and those that weren't, able to fake it, in green and red and gold. Clint took to roosting around the tower because - safer was a strong word, okay, but small was a learned weakness that he knew before he could talk, and small had never gotten him into any place good.

So how was this -

How was this what he chose now? Backed against a wall by the door of his apartment, surrounded and towered over and cut off by a curtain of dark hair that fell forward when Bucky leaned into him?

Clint tilted his head back, acknowledged small and showed weakness, and Bucky gave him a slow small smile and a hesitant small kiss, and it was difficult to remember how small hadn't ever been anything like safe.


	41. Chapter 41

Ah fuck. _Fuck._  

Hey. Hey, Clint, it’s gonna be - it’s - 

You can’t even - say it, can you?

 _Fine_ , Clint. It’s gonna be -

You’re a shitty liar. 

-

Aaw, don’t, Buck. Don’t with the - the face. I can’t -

 _Clint_  - 

Ah, Jesus, this fuckin’ hurts. Fuck. 

\- read me? Anyone? _Anyone?_

Bueller? ...ah shit, shit, don’t make me laugh. 

I don’t think I can - 

Buck - 

\- _take_  this, I don’t think I’ll - 

Bucky, don’t - 

\- survive it Clint I can’t - I can’t - 

Had this book of - dying words, once. 

Clint. 

In a safehouse, I think? Ironic. It - ah, _fuck_ , fuck - it was all these lies about the great things people said, like - like who thinks about - who _practices_  that, right?

Clint, _please -_  

This ain’t the legend I thought it’d be. Oh Jesus, Bucky, don’t, please don’t, don’t do that, I hate when you cry, I swear -

 Anyone? _Please?_

Ah fuck, shit, I can’t - ah fuck make it _stop_  -

Baby - 

I always - ah! 

Clint, baby - 

I always liked Nelson’s. 

Clint, I love you, okay. I love you, you fucking bastard, don’t -

\- disabled kickass motherfucker, always liked - 

\- _don’t._

Just. Just kiss me, Bucky.


	42. Chapter 42

They drink, him and Steve. They drink so much. Start toasting the memory of everyone they ever lost, but even for a pair of super soldiers the list is too damn long.

For so many reasons, Bucky didn't think he'd make it to 100 - fuck, Bucky didn't think he'd make it past 30 - and somewhere around the bottom of bottle number eleven his centenary becomes fuckin' hilarious.

Bucky laughs until he cries, until he's holding his stomach like he's been cut open, until Steve's hauling him into a messy hug, pressing lips to the side of his head, wrapping arms across his heaving back tight, tighter, tightest like that'll stop the tears coming from the endless well of fuckin' awful inside of him.

Happy fuckin' birthday, Bucky Barnes.

The archer, Barton, he finds them eventually, slumped against each other all exhausted and spent. He's silent when he hauls Steve to his feet, impressive show of strength for a regular guy, and Bucky flops over onto his back and stares up at the ceiling and listens to Barton transfer custody to someone outside, their responsibility now.

When he comes back Bucky allows him to tug him to sitting, curious calluses pressed against the inside of his wrist, but he won't cooperate any further. Eventually Barton shrugs and joins him, surprisingly fluid motion for such a solid man.

"Figure the deep freeze will deal with the hangover?" Barton says, and then his whole body winces a little, like there's the taste of shoe leather in his mouth.

"'s my birthday," Bucky tells him, his words already slurring less. "100 years."

"Christ, you're old," Barton says, irreverent, before he thinks, and his fuckin' face when he tries to work out how to make that sound less bad - Bucky hiccups his way into something closer to a laugh than anything he could share with Steve today.

"Thanks," he says, and means it.


	43. Chapter 43

"Fuck you, 'cupid'."

Bucky bit down on a grin. "Hey, not my fault my memory's for shit, pal. Clint, Cupid, I knew it began with a c..."

Hawkeye shot him a death glare, face all squinched, and this time Bucky let the grin out, filled full of all the asshole humour Steve's stories somehow always ignored he had.

"You got somethin' against being compared to a love god?"

"Got somethin' against you comparing me to a naked baby," Clint said, still pissed, and the briefings on history, heck, Steve and _Tony_ \- things had changed since his day. So Bucky made no bones about the way his eyes dropped, a slow scan that lingered on Clint's shoulders, those fuckin' arms, the way his shirt was tight against the ridges of his stomach.

"Don't like me thinking about you naked?" He asked. Clint swallowed, hard, sky blue eyes widening just a touch.

"Five minutes ago you couldn't remember my name," he said, all defiance, but still shifting a little into Bucky's gaze.

"Know it well enough to remember what to call out when I'm on top of you," Bucky said, helplessly fucking daring, and Clint let out a soft sound from deep in his chest that pulled Bucky forward like a magnet, like gravity, pushing into Clint's space and making the most of that goddamn beautiful mouth.

 

*

 

"Clint," he whispered later, warm breath into his ear, "Clint," a little louder, bruises sucked into his neck, " _Baby_ ," and laughed, when Clint bit down.


	44. Chapter 44

He doesn’t mean to, and he gets that it paints him in a particularly pathetic light, but Clint sneaks into Bucky’s room five nights out of seven, and the other two he’s in medical or staring at the ceiling or (briefly) dead (once). 

It’s possible Bucky’s awake. It’s probable Bucky’s awake, frankly, but he never says anything and Clint never says anything and Clint’s always gone before he admits to it, anyway. 

They’ve been fucking for maybe three months. It’s good. It’s _good_. It’s the best Clint’s had. But he’s counting their kisses on the fingers of his right hand and he’s still only good for smashing scissors, still defeated by paper-thin excuses that get him out of there before any justifications have to be made. 

He’s been fucked and tied down and used up and wrecked and left in pieces, and his dreams are full of nothing more than velvet brushes of lips against lips. 

He doesn’t mean to, and he gets that it paints him in a particularly pathetic light, but five nights out of seven Clint brushes his lips against the nape of Bucky’s neck and pretends that’s enough.


	45. Chapter 45

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bucky's perspective on 44.

****

Two nights out of seven, Bucky can’t sleep for shit. He tosses, he turns, he prowls the compound until he knows the corridors better than he knows the back of the one hand he has left. 

The other five he fakes it so goddamn well as his door hisses open, as Clint pretends like Bucky wouldn’t’ve had to tacitly agree to this, that the door wouldn’t be so obliging if Bucky hadn’t wanted every second of Clint’s touch. 

They’ve been having each other at every goddamn opportunity for fourteen weeks, and Bucky can’t talk to Clint outside of it without wanting to press him against the nearest surface, take his mouth and _own_  it. But Clint ducks his head and rolls over and arches up like that’s all Bucky wants him for, and Bucky has no idea how to tell him different. Bucky can’t talk to Clint outside of it at all. 

Two nights out of seven, Bucky can’t sleep for shit. The other five, he waits for the gentle hiss, the pad of quiet feet, waits for the lips against the nape of his neck to weigh him down into sleep. 


	46. Chapter 46

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fix-it for 44/45, as requested.

Clint wakes up, ears stuffed up with aids all clammy and gross, belt digging into his side.

There’s that moment of displacement - this ain’t his room, why is he - only it _is_. This is _his_ room, and the unfamiliarity is ‘cos he hasn’t woken here in maybe a month, now.

Not like it’s news that he’s in too deep.

He must tense a little, make some movement, ‘cos there’s a sleep muffled grunt, and the heavy warm weight that he’s only just noticing tightens a little around his waist.

It’s - new. This is new. Clint goes to _Bucky_ , that’s how this works, 'cos he knew that was the only way he was gonna get what he - the only way he was gonna get any sleep, and this is not - that’s how this _works_.

It’s the first time Bucky’s been in his room, he’s pretty sure, and for a moment he feels like he should haul himself out of bed and start picking up the coffee mugs and discarded shirts, like the way his mom had always kept a spotless apartment even when she was wearing the mess her marriage was on her face.

Bucky’s arm tightens again, like he can feel what Clint’s thinking, slings a leg over his for good measure, and Clint shifts a little back out of instinct, 'cos that’s what him and Bucky _do_ , and his head pounds with the motion but he thinks he can take it, he thinks it’d be worth it -

“Not what I’m here for,” Bucky mumbles, into the skin just under Clint’s ear.

Clint licks his lips, loud in the darkness.

“So what’re you here for?” He asks.

“You,” Bucky says, and that can’t - he can’t mean what that sounds like, that’s not -

Soft lips press to the skin under Bucky’s mouth, and Clint couldn’t help the hitch in his breathing if his life depended on it. He turns his aching head, presses into it, and Bucky leans up, weight on one elbow, and presses forward so he can trail kisses along Clint’s jaw, across uneven stubble and scar lines and imperfections.

“What - ?” Clint tries, but Bucky cuts him off, the gentle pressure of lips against his, and this isn’t - this isn’t what they have at all, this isn’t -

But maybe, he thinks, daring to hope, daring to lift a hand to tangle in Bucky’s long hair, maybe it could be.


	47. Chapter 47

Bars were tough, sometimes, especially if there was music. It got difficult to sort out the layers of sound, and mostly Clint just nodded and grinned when the expressions seemed right for it, stuck to sipping a little more of his beer every time someone looked like they expected him to talk.

It was another blind date, 'cos Tasha somehow managed to combine the most hardline cynic that ever existed and the most determined matchmaker you could ever meet in one tiny body. And this guy could have been the man of Clint's dreams, for all he knew, but lip-reading meant staring at a guy's mouth and he had _learned_ , okay. No more blow jobs in the bathroom on the first damn date.

Tasha _judged_.

"...good defence this year," managed to sneak its way through the background babble, and the fact that Clint had no clue whether he was talking basketball, football, or the New York legal system really wasn't a great sign.

"You want another drink?" He said, and the look on the guy's face said he was a little too loud.

"Sure," he said, and Clint grabbed their empties and headed for the bar.

"...don't care if it's squeezed from the tear ducts of actresses on Oscars night, pal, I ain't paying over ten bucks for a beer."

Clint looked down the bar to where the noise was coming from, the first clear thing he'd heard all night. There was a blond with his back to Clint, face turned and saying something to the barman, every line of his body an apology, and some asshole staring belligerently with his arms folded, jaw tight and eyes flinty. Clint kinda wanted to see what he could do to soften that mouth.

"...get you?" He half-heard, and he turned to grin at the girl behind the bar.

"Two more," he said, gesturing with the empties he held, "and something obnoxiously expensive for the asshole with the murder stare."

He still wasn't getting his volume quite right, 'cos the asshole turned to look at him, blue-gray eyes kinda curious. Clint ducked his head into a grin, and it looked like he wasn't the only one had a problem not staring at a guy's mouth.


	48. Chapter 48

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Possibly will be ficced.

Bucky slipped between folds of tent cloth, feeling strange and out of place. He wasn't even sure what he was aiming for, here, if he was just here to congratulate, one kickass marksman to another, or if this was an area where he was more used to his best clothes and somethin' to slick down his hair. He wasn't sure what kind of picture he offered in his khakis and the inherited loose shirt that still had the bulletholes in the back.

When the musty-smelling canvas was finally out of his way, Bucky almost swallowed his tongue. The bright tunic the guy had been wearing had been stripped off, discarded on a rickety bed, and even in the low light that filtered in he glittered, a little. All along the sculpted lines of him, the scarred back and freckled shoulders that made Bucky's mouth go dry. And Jesus, whatever the hell kinda pants the guy was wearing, they did nothing for his modesty, outlining and highlighting and -

"Whatever entertainment you're used to out here," the guy said, startling Bucky's eyes away from where he'd been staring, "that ain't what they pay me for."

Bucky flushed bright and then paled, aware precisely how much trouble he could be in, but the guy's mouth was twisted up in amusement and nothing else.

"No I just," Bucky stuttered, wrong footed and uncertain, "your shooting. Damn, pal, that was something else."

For a second the guy looked startled by the compliment, even after all the applause. Then he grinned, slow and hot and practiced, somehow. "Didn't look like my shooting was all you were checking out."

Bucky flicked a glance towards the entrance, then back at the archer, unwilling to say anything at all that could be overheard. In his inattention the archer moved closer, leaned in until they were almost touching.

"I - "

Two fingers layered with calluses pressed his mouth closed, quickly replaced by a pair of lips that were too quickly gone.

"You wanna be careful who you're tangling yourself up with, soldier," the Amazing Hawkeye told him, but to Bucky it seemed the warning was too little and far too late.


	49. Chapter 49

When Bucky comes back from the airplane bathroom - which as per Stark is obscenely luxurious and now he smells like some kinda orchid - Clint is still where he left him.

"Hey, darlin'," Bucky says, leaning in at a careful angle that won't bump his chin against Clint's nose. Okay, he maybe gets a little distracted, but he's not the only one.

When he returns to the couch, Tony's still kinda transfixed, staring at the pole and the ex-circus act still coiled all pretty around it, keeping himself up and making it look effortless.

"Holy shit," Tony mutters eventually.

"Yup," Bucky says.

"The muscles."

Bucky grins, whole worlds of fuckin' smug. "Yup."

"The _stamina_."

Bucky holds up a metal fist; without shifting his gaze, Tony bumps his own against it.


	50. Chapter 50

The guards were uneasy.

They Believed in the Leader, of course, because a lack of fervent and unquestioning belief was swiftly recognised, swiftly dealt with, swiftly rooted out. Yet there were those most insidious and dangerous tendrils of doubt, thin and subtle and stronger than iron, edging their way into their stone-clad minds.

It was the way he was grinning, that was what was so unsettling.

The prisoner was lounging against the wall, feet crossed at the ankle. He wore a purple shirt and soft pants for sleeping, and his feet were bare - it was clear from his arms that this was not a man to be disregarded even in such a state of relaxation, but taking him in his sleep at least limited the weapons he could bring to bear. It had still not stopped him from taking down five men before he dropped, himself.

There was the distant sound of a shout, of running feet.

The prisoner's grin did not falter - if anything, it widened.

"Well this looks bad," he said.

The guards looked at each other, and then their heads snapped around in unison to the archway that led out into the corridor, and the rattling explosion outside it.

"You think I'm scary," the prisoner continued, "you really should meet my best guy."

There was a gently tearing sound, a hollow thud, and the first of the guards dropped with an arrow in his chest.

The prisoner folded his arms, and smiled.


	51. Chapter 51

There's soft music playing when Bucky lets himself into Clint's place that night, the unmistakeable hiss and pop of a record unwinding something that Bucky hadn't even realised was coiled tight. The lighting's gentle, too, off-centre and warm, and Bucky shrugs off his jacket and lays it over the back of the couch, which has been moved closer to the door to clear space.

"What're you up to, sweetheart?" He asks, his voice soft but clear enough for Clint, the way his endearments always are.

Clint's standing in the middle of the cleared space, bare feet and smart pants and an untucked button-up, which for him is practically unprecedented levels of dressed up. He's put something in his hair, which Bucky can tell because he's got his head ducked down a little and his hands tucked into pockets, left over from when he was a kid, when he was taught to hide his smiles.

"I did some research," Clint says after a second. "Nostalgic pop-ups and bass-thumping speak-easies, and more hipsters than you could shake a stick at."

"Yeah," Bucky drawls, "I got maybe five words in there."

"I want to take you dancing," Clint says, which is a gut punch of happiness that Bucky didn't expect, and for a moment he's breathless.

"Yeah?" He manages.

"I think I found a couple places you'll like." He smiles, wide and kinda beautiful. "I dragged Steve along for approval."

Bucky stumbles forward, pushes his hands past loose fabric so he can rest them on Clint's hips, pulling him gently forward and into Bucky's space.

"Only problem," Clint says, coming easy, tucking himself into Bucky all solid and perfect and warm, "is I don't know your kinda dancing. Figured you could teach me."

Bucky leans in, dreamlike and slow, and kisses Clint a little like he used to kiss dames in Brooklyn. Only a little, though, 'cos this ain't anything he felt back then, and holding back the feelings that colour his kisses isn't anything he's interested in learning to do.

"Might take me a while," Clint says, "before I'm willing to do this where people can see."

"I'll give you all the time in the world," Bucky tells him, swaying him a little to the crackle and hiss of the record, and means it with everything he is.


	52. Chapter 52

"So, Barton," Tony said, grinning a little wide, a little manic, a little like every other manifestation of his very worst ideas, "what secrets have you been hiding?"

" _Stark_ ," Steve snapped, and the look on Barton's face could've reduced Tony to ashes.

Barton's hands moved, jerky and swift and like he was doing everything in his power to stop them.

"Right," Tony said, somewhere in the no man's land between relief and disappointment, "of course it'd be the Deaf guy who got hit with the truth spell. Anyone know -"

"What the fuck?" Bucky cut in, and all of the colour drained out of Clint's face. He swore, viciously.

"Fuck," he said, "fuck, I didn't -" and then slapped a hand over his own mouth, almost hard enough to bruise, and ducked out of the nearest door quicker than anyone could react.

"Tony," Steve said, cold and implacable and six foot something of holy fucking vengeance, and Bucky just caught a glimpse of the sheer, pants-shitting terror on Tony's face before he dived through the doorway, hot on Clint's heels.

Of course this wasn't safe. Of course none of the dozens of hiding places he'd carefully curated could be fucking safe, because Clint was about as subtle - and as transparent - as a glass hammer, and now the blow had been struck and there were pieces of him everywhere. And every one of them, _every_ one, Bucky knew.

He pushed a little tighter into the corner of the crawl space, like that would make the slightest difference, and tucked his face in against the worn-through denim of his jeans. His cheeks kinda stung from the rough treatment; he wasn't one for tears, usually, but it turned out the truth was emotionally exhausting and exactly as awful as he'd thought it might be.

Fuck, he wished Tasha was here.

"Ever think about telling me?" Bucky said, low and kinda soothing, like Clint was a zoo animal or an idiot or a child.

"Thought about it," Clint told his knees.

"Didn't think maybe that's something I would've liked to know?"

"Really not about you, Bucky," Clint said, finally raising his head, and yeah under the circumstances that was kinda comical maybe, but Clint meant it down in the bones of him. He'd never loved with expectation, that wasn't how he was made - that was how he and Tasha had never had a moment of awkwardness as friends.

"What if it is?" Bucky asked, and Clint looked at him in the bare half-light, barely able to make out his features let alone read their expression.

"Not an idiot," Clint said, and Bucky's snort echoed back from metal walls.

"Yeah you are," Bucky said, but the tone of his voice was all wrong for it. "You're my best friend in this goddamn century, Clint, and I love you."

"But..." Clint prompted.

"Nah," Bucky said. "I was done."


	53. Chapter 53

Bucky laced up his skates, ducking his head and feeling a little sick with himself. Coach had been pretty fucking clear - either he took out the Avengers’ golden boy or he was out for the next three games, the only ones there was even a chance scouts’d get to. And if Bucky didn’t get out of this rec league shitty team soon -

The Avengers were a pretty impressive outfit, but they weren’t unbeatable. Keep Rogers and Stark apart, get Banner to drop gloves and land himself in the penalty box, keep Wilson from building up speed… they all had their weaknesses.

And then there was Clint fucking Barton.

What to say about Clint Barton? Outta Bumfuck Iowa, Bucky had no clue how he’d even learned to skate in the first place, and half the time Barton looked like he didn’t know either. He was either economical movement and athletic grace, or he was some kind of lame duck embarrassment, sprawled out on the ice after tripping over his own damned stick. Get him the puck, though…

Barton was a sniper. His ability to calculate ricochets, make split-second decisions, make physics his bitch - it was a little hard to believe, if you’d ever met the guy.

(Bucky’d met the guy, and that was something he was trying real hard not to think about.)

Bucky, he had some of Barton’s skill, but the Hydra had weighed up his shots against his balance, his low centre of gravity, his ability to take punishment and keep on swinging, and there’d never been a question about which’d come out top. If Clint - _Barton_ \- was a sniper, Bucky was a hitman in every possible sense. He was the kind of player the crowd loved to hate, that opposing teams just hated, simple and vicious.

So when Bucky stepped awkwardly out onto the ice and red and gold curved to a stop in front of him he was expecting anything but Clint’s wide open prairie sky grin.

He shouldered past - the booing was starting already, sign he was doin’ his job right - and wished to hell he didn’t remember so clearly how that grin had felt against his mouth.


	54. Chapter 54

Bucky kept breathing, his fists rhythmically clenching, air whistling high and tight through his nose.

"Easy," a voice said, low and careful and stirring the hair by his ear, "easy, Barnes, I got you."

And it'd be comforting but for the gentle scrape of metal that Bucky knew, he knew they were lock picks, Barton had shown him before he'd gone back there, but what you knew in your head and what you knew in the pit of your stomach weren't always all that similar.

Something clicked, something else gave a little, and a sound escaped Bucky. It was small enough to slide through the barest gap Barton had bought him, but even through the gag it was loud enough, more than loud enough to be heard, and Barton's quick fingers stilled for a second.

"We're gonna get them," Barton said, after a second, and the low vicious note in his voice was new to Bucky but he already wanted to hear it again. "We're gonna rip their fucking tongues out for doing this to you I swear."

And he pressed a kiss to the side of Bucky's head, hard enough to knock him a little sideways, like it was a sealing a promise he would force Bucky to believe.

For the barest second, Bucky was grateful for the gag; this wasn't the way he wanted Barton to hear him beg.


	55. Chapter 55

_s2g Stevie gonna hunt down ducks in 6b and tear there arms off_

Bucky shoved his phone deep into his pocket and folded his arms across his bare chest, glaring at anyone who looked like they shared a zip code with him, let alone a building.

It was old and brick and halfway falling apart, and the rent - especially for someone with a record - was pretty fuckin' reasonable for what he got for it. The fact that that came with pretty much guaranteed weekly fire alarms had seemed, on moving in day, to be a reasonable compromise. Midnight in fucking March was a whole different story.

He wished he'd thought to grab a sweatshirt, but he'd been on nights all week and he'd been halfway down the fire escape before he'd even been quite awake. Looked like he wasn't the only one with that problem, too - a guy with a target on his shirt, a spectacular case of bedhead, and the most obscenely form-fitting yoga pants Bucky had ever seen shuffled to a stop next to Bucky, leaned against the wall, and to all appearances fell back asleep.

Bucky didn't shuffle closer - that'd be weird, and creepy, and so what if he could feel the guy's body heat radiating across the space between them - but he did glare away the couple of people who looked like they wanted to get into the blond guy's space, wake him up outta his nap.

Blondie shuffled anyway, snorted himself vertical when the fire engines roared up and then collapsed back against the wall with a soft groan, drifting gently sideways until his head was leaning on Bucky's shoulder. And that - that should've been weird, and creepy, and a big fucking no since he'd got out, but instead he found himself relaxing into it, relishing the warmth, fighting the urge to bury his nose in clean-smelling hair.

"Hey," he said, soft, amused, "I'm Bucky," and blondie mumbled something unintelligible and single-syllabled, then raised his hand to Bucky's mouth and pressed his finger across his lips which was kinda forward for a first date and all. Bucky shrugged, grinned a little, settled into the weight and dug his phone out of his pocket.

 _ducks don't have arms_ Steve had replied, but that was okay. Bucky was suddenly feeling a whole lot less homicidal.


	56. Chapter 56

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continuation of an earlier chapter.

Another shadow loomed in the darkness and James clenched his fist, weary but still filled with the blood-pounding anger that had made the attempted thievery almost a blessing. He took a step forward and then relaxed, abruptly, and refused to consider what it said about where his attention had been that little more than a silhouette could reassure him so.

Barton was dressed in dark clothing, finer made than his more usual dress. It transformed him almost into a stranger, and that was surely what set the hairs rising on the back of James’ neck, and not how well he looked in the shadow and the moonlight.

“I’m impressed,” Barton said, his usual half-laughing tone, and for an instant James despised him.

“For a cripple?” He asked, icy politeness.

“For any man with odds of three to one,” Barton corrected, stepping over one of the groaning men on the ground.

“Military service requires more of a man than that he look well on a horse.”

Barton’s mouth quirked, although it was not into anything like a smile.

“My sort never got horses.”

It was an odd moment, at once a sense of camaraderie and a knowledge of unbridgeable distance. James stared into shadowed eyes with the awareness that something ought to be said, but all at once a grey fatigue had overtaken him as his anger finally faded away, and instead he turned on his heel and headed for the mouth of the alley.

“May I escort you to your rooms?” Barton said from behind him, an odd sort of seriousness to his voice.

“I am not infirm, or weak, or a woman,” James snapped, turning to glare at Barton where he lounged against the wall, still the same irreverent man in spite of his well cut clothes. Therefore he didn’t miss the moment where the man’s eyes dropped, dragged up the length of him, and James felt it almost as a touch.

“Believe me,” Barton said, “I am well aware.”


	57. Chapter 57

Bucky didn’t get the significance of it, the first time.

When he got home from the market, worn thin string bag dangling from his gloved hand, he’d like to say he knew instantly that something wasn’t right, but it wasn’t until he saw the blond American drinking beer on his couch that he realised he was in trouble. Had no idea how much trouble he was in.

“Found you.”

He swung the bag to take maximum advantage of the cabbage at the bottom of it, but the guy ducked out of the way so it just hit one of his upraised hands.

“Hey wait, wait -”

Bucky didn’t wait. He charged past the guy, swung himself out of the window and onto the fire escape, was two floors down before the guy’s head appeared out the window.

“Pretty sure it’s my turn to hide,” he called, mock-sulky, and the rest of the helter-skelter dash down to street level was accompanied by slow counting.

*

He was lying, waiting, silent, the second time. Rooftop gravel pressed uncomfortably into his stomach, but the angle was perfect and the discomfort was minimal. Especially when compared with what would greet a lack of success.

The earbud crackled in his ear, and Bucky shifted his weight, laid his finger alongside the trigger guard.

“Hey,” said a casual voice in his ear. “Found you.”

Bucky didn’t pause, just dismantled his gun with quick jerky movements, shoved it into the duffle bag at his feet, hauled it onto his back and took off at a jog. He said nothing.

“Turned mercenary, huh?” The voice said. “I’d be disappointed, but I know what that asshole did.”

Somewhere, storeys below, there was a scream, the sound of screeching brakes.

Bucky darted into an unoccupied elevator, leaned his back against the wall and ducked his head so the brim of his cap hid almost all of his face.

The voice in his ear, low and a little drawling, counted upward as the elevator sank, the perfect inverse of the glowing numbers. Bucky headed out into the lobby as the voice hit the high eighties and he shoved his hand into his pocket, stared at the floor, pushed his way through the revolving door at a carefully judged lack of speed.

“Ready or not,” the guy said, and Bucky pulled out the earbud and dumped it in the nearest trash can, circling wide around the gawkers surrounding a guy sprawled out on the concrete, eyes wide, chest pierced by - Jesus, was that an arrow?

*

Bucky didn’t even raise his head when the door opened again, not for a second or two. The endless parade of black-clad agents had slowed from a flood; now he presumed they were mostly the other side of one-way glass, wondering what the fuck to do with a wayward assassin who’d come in from the cold.

He was. Cold. Everything was made of concrete and glass and steel, and they’d taken his clothes when they’d realised how much of them could be used as weapons. He was in thin sweatpants, a ratty shirt, bare feet curled against each other under his chair. So he gratefully wrapped his hand around the coffee mug that was placed in front of him, breathed in the wisps of rising steam.

“Hey,” said a voice, warm, and amused, and stupidly familiar.

He was still blond, still American, though the smile lines were maybe a little deeper around eyes the same cornflower blue.

“Hey,” he said again, and his smile was some kinda revelation. “Found you.”


	58. Chapter 58

Sometimes it's difficult to tell when the spring arrives, round the tower, but green sneaks in around the edges in Bed-Stuy. Sure, it's mostly a haze of green across bricks, but there's wildflowers in the vacant lot across the street, and someone's optimistically growing tomatoes on the roof. 

Clint sprawls like a cat in the sunlight, basking and stretching and melting into it. He's made for summer, all the colours of him, and Bucky feels a little like he's living off the reflected glow of it. Like he doesn't exactly belong, but he's got a handful of pomegranate seeds and he's willing to be selfish if this - sunlight gleaming on golden lashes resting on cheeks, Clint's blissful smile up into the warmth - is what he's bartering for.


	59. Chapter 59

"Hey," Bucky says, breath-quiet in deference to the library, "I want to eat your ass."

The blond guy across from him - the blond guy who's been across from him for three weeks now, not that Bucky's been counting or anything - grins and nods a welcome. He's chewing on the end of his pen and his ever-present headphones are pushing his hair into stupid-looking peaks and whorls, and Bucky kinda wants to push him to the floor and suck on his tongue a little.

"You ever had someone eat you out for hours?" Bucky continues, getting out his notebook, a pen he stole from his roommate, a monster-sized bottle of Mountain Dew. "I keep thinkin' about what noises you'd make."

He looks up and blue eyes snap away from his, a light flush making itself visible across the guy's cheeks, embarrassed to be caught staring.

The guy's headphones are battered, held together with tape, but two weeks ago Bucky had had to drag the guy outside by the elbow when a fire alarm'd gone off, so they're clearly the expensive kind, noise-cancelling. So he's safe enough to say this, to let out all the shit he's been thinking since the first time he'd looked up into the guy's hopeful face and moved his bag so he could sit.

"I think you'd be noisy, see," he says, looking down at his notebook. "I think you'd start out quiet, maybe, but I don't think you'd stay that way. Kinda want to drag you into the stacks and suck you off, see if you can stop yourself from makin' a sound."

The loud scrape of a chair interrupts him. He jerks his head up and startles back 'cos the guy's leaning over the table, pushed in close, and his voice is quiet and intense when he speaks.

"I'm deaf, asshole," he says. "I can read your fucking lips."

 _Fuck_.

Bucky feels his cheeks heat, a slow unstoppable lava flow of humiliation, and he starts shoving his stuff back in his bag until he's grabbed by the elbow and pulled roughly to his feet.

"Look," he says, "I'm sorry -"

He's cut off by a rush of heat and breath and the press of hot lips against his, hard and relentless.

"Better not be," the guy says.


	60. Chapter 60

You just kinda forget, sometimes. The good and the bad. Sometimes your brain allows things to slip slide beneath the surface, allows you to go through your life unconcerned, untroubled by the things you forgot to remember.

Course, then, you forget to remember to forget and it's like tripping over in your dreams, gut shot of adrenaline and the futile drum of feet against mattress, blown back years and any number of steps 'cos corner-caught windows are that certain shade of blue.

But it works both ways, 'cos you can't think about the good at all hours of the day or what the hell else would you get done? So there's that sudden gut shot only this time it's warm, impossible, stomach punch awareness 'cos of how beautiful he is when he smiles. He's _beautiful_ when he smiles.

And it feels like a secret, like a rediscovery, like the world is new every time he pushes his hand through his long damned hair and your world tilts a little on its axis. Like the exact colour of his eyes is some kinda revelation.

So you'll take the blue, and the moment of terror, 'cos your brain working this way lets you remember you love him every day like it's new.


	61. Chapter 61

"Oh no puppy," Clint says, rushed out like it's all one word, and drops to his knees so sudden it's like he's been shot. It sends a bolt of cold sharp fear through Bucky's belly too quick to react to before his brain processes the words, and he lets out a shaky breath before dropping to a crouch.

The dog's tied up to a railing, and Bucky's not sure how they found it a collar that small - it's all eyes and trembles, and Clint's careful hand dwarfs its tiny head as he gently rubs behind its ear.

"Hey puppy," he says softly, "hey, look at you."

Bucky never thought he had that thing, that human thing, that reaction to big eyes and fragility. He doesn't remember if he ever - if it was burned out of him, or if it was the war, or whether he was just never wired that way - but there's a definite kick in his stomach that's all tied up with the tone of Clint's voice. Like he can picture it, Clint crooning terrible country songs to a tiny someone who won't sleep, can somehow picture himself part of the scenery there, and it's a moment of impossibly beautiful terror.

"Hey pretty," Clint says, and his hand is still stroking but his eyes are on Bucky, amused and gently teasing.

"Fuck I'm in love with you," Bucky says, rushed out like it's all one word, and the world sways enough that he drops onto his ass so sudden it's like he's been shot.


	62. Chapter 62

The most infuriating thing about Clinton Francis Barton - and the man was nothing if not a list of infuriating things - was his insistence that he was nothing much special.

Not in public, not in uniform, not then of course. Then he was on stage, in costume, there for the adoration of the crowd. The Amazing Hawkeye was a well-worn mask, so well-worn that the delineations of Clint were a little hard to spot.

Bucky hunted them down. He made no bones about it. He caught Clint in corners and cutting remarks, self-flagellation of a professional grade. He eased off the mask that was so habitually in place, and found the secret lines of the smile that hid underneath it.

Clint thought he was nothing much special; Bucky thought he was nothing _but_ special, from the purple canvas sneakers to the ducked-head palmed-nape shy flushed smile of him.

"You think I do this for just anybody?" Bucky asked, husky and forehead-pressed and lips pleasantly used.

Clint looked a little confused; not enough to stop him pressing forward for another butterfly kiss.

"Tried not to think about it," he said.

"Nah," Bucky said, "you're somethin' special."


	63. Chapter 63

"Look I'm just saying, alright? You lived in a circus, you should know fuckin' animals."

Clint gave him a flat look, so unimpressed with his very existence, and Bucky bit down hard on his lower lip.

"So enlighten me," Clint said, and you could use his voice as a spirit level. "The fuck would a giraffe do in the circus?"

"I dunno, clowns could ride 'em."

"Clowns could - the _fuck_?"

"Like itty bitty clowns. Clown kids - "

"Fuckin' riding giraffes? They've got legs like -"

"Skinny clown kids."

" - _match sticks_ and if you think I'd be part of -"

"Skinny gravity resistant clown kids."

"- animal cruelty, you - what?"

"We could face paint the X-men," Bucky offered, and Clint's eyes finally warmed a little. His mouth twitched.

(They never fought about what they were fighting about, 'cos Clint shied away from conflict like a spooked giraffe and Bucky didn't deal well with the abandonment issues. So they fought about shit like this and let resolutions lie in laughter, let the conversations happen in the dark and the warm and the safe of night.)

"Fuck you," Clint said, and let his face relax into a grin. "It's a giraffe."

"It's got no neck," Bucky said, "it's a cow in fancy dress."

"It's got those antennae things!"

" _Antennae?_ "

Clint laughed and buried his mouth against Bucky's shoulder, hiding a kiss in the folds of his shirt.

"I'm still mad at you," he said.

"Noted," Bucky answered, brushing a kiss of his own against Clint's hair.

Es, in her stroller, happily oblivious, chewed contentedly on the giraffe-cow's ear.


	64. Chapter 64

“You just grow up and think - you think love is everything at first, right? Like all that Disney shit. And you’re looking for the one, and 24 hours is a totally satisfactory courting period, and you end up accidentally fucking someone behind the bleachers in the most bullshit uncomfortable awkward quick flailing get-off you ever experienced. And you just kinda… swear off it, a while. ‘Cos sex is subjective, but good aim is good aim, and you’re listening to pigeons fuck on your balcony but you hit the bullseye 20 times with 20 arrows. Right?”

The crowd laughs, but it’s already a little uncomfortable, he knows this. Open bar. Big mistake.

“And then you meet this one perfect person who’s lacking that one perfect penis, but she’s everything you need in a human, and she tells you love is for children and you think yeah, yeah, 'cos I love you like a child does, all wide open and perfect.”

And maybe everyone’s uncomfortable, but Tasha is smiling, and all Clint wants is for Tasha to smile that way.

“So love is for children, and you figure that makes you a child, only then your perfect meets her perfect, and you meet her perfect’s best friend, and suddenly everything’s balconies and bleachers and bullseyes all at once, like this perfect explosion of fucked up that is love.”

He grins, and Tash grins, and Steve gives it a goddamn good try, and Bucky’s staring like a smack in the face which could be good, could be bad, could be balconies or bleachers but Clint’s resigned to giving him whatever he wants, he’s hopeless.

“So Bucky,” he says, “we should maybe talk; everyone else, the bride and groom!”

And there’s cheers, and raised glasses, and Bucky’s slow dawning smile that makes him helplessly hope for bullseyes.


	65. Chapter 65

The metal registered pressure, but not texture, not heat. Kisses felt no different from fingers, and the gentle trail of Clint’s mouth along the line of his arm might just as well be the brush of bed covers or soft runnels of rain.

It wasn’t until Clint reached his shoulder that Bucky could feel it, properly feel it, feel his smile and how long it’d been since he’d shaved. The scar tissue was a moment’s static between the two, inconsistent pressure and uneven heat, until Bucky could arch his neck into the warmth of Clint’s mouth.

“You know I can’t feel that right,” he stated, flat, as Clint navigated his way around the perfectly articulated ball of his thumb.

“I know,” Clint said, leaning up far enough to press his lips to the sulky line of Bucky’s mouth. Bucky pressed in, pushed for more, and Clint indulged him for all of a moment before skimming past scar tissue and onto cold metal.

“Wish you wouldn’t waste time when you could be kissin’ _me_ ,” Bucky grumbled, and Clint smiled a sad sort of smile and brushed his mouth back and forth across Bucky’s shoulder, the stuttering sensation strange and uncomfortable and somehow _good_.

“Saying things like that is a little of why,” Clint said, and there were too many emotions tangled up on his voice for Bucky to dare working out what he meant.

 

 


	66. Chapter 66

James Barnes is kind of an asshole. 

He’s also Clint’s hero, but that’s pretty standard; Clint has always had a habit of idolizing the wrong people. Like Barney. Like Mr Laufeyson, the weird (and weirdly creepy) physics teacher. Like, one time, his dad. He should maybe worry more about how starry-eyed he gets when someone threatens to punch him, but it got him Tasha, and he’ll never see anything wrong in that. The fact it got him this weird lop-sided thing for tall dark and perpetually angry, too - well. Clint can deal. 

*

The first time he remembers seeing Barnes, the guy isn’t even close to the first thing Clint notices. Hard to look away from the five foot nothing blond scrap of anger that’s bleeding all over the school bus. Clint feels something clench in his stomach - fear and anger and fellow-feeling, all at once - and he wishes there was something he could say that’d help, even a little, but with his worlds of experience he knows nothing ever helps. Also his - last night - also he’s not hearing so good, right now, and that always makes him a little self-conscious about saying anything at all. 

He traces Tiny’s bruises with his eyes, knows exactly which red patches will change color and when, winces a little when he sees the corner of his mouth ‘cos that’s a place it looks like he just can’t help moving. He kinda likes that, though, likes the anger there, ‘cos Clint always just went for scowls and sarcasm, and that never got him anywhere good. 

“ _Hey_ ,” a voice says, angry and abrupt and the kind of annoyed that comes with repetition, and Clint’s eyes snap up instant and defensive, his hands folding into fists. “What the hell’re you staring at?” 

This guy’s about as far opposite from Tiny as it’s possible to be. He looks like he hit puberty right in the face, muscled and stubbled and angry and _hot_. His eyes are ice-cold blue and his jaw’s clenched tight, and Clint should be backing up right now but instead he’s just glad that Tiny’s got someone on his side, even if it gets him punched in the mouth for it. 

“Sorry,” he mumbles, and his hands ache a little when he unclenches them, raising them in front of him and inadvertently showing off the small crescent shapes bitten deep. 

“Bucky,” Tiny says, annoyed and impatient and weirdly deep from his narrow chest, and his friend rolls his eyes, slings an arm around Tiny, drags him onto the bench seat at the back of the bus. Clint can hear the mumbled bitching, tone clear even if he can’t make out the words, as they clean up with tissues and bottled water and - in spite of protests - Bucky’s sleeve. 

Clint has band-aids. Clint practically has a fuckin’ drug store in his bag, actually, but revealing that gets too many long looks and questions that Clint knows better than to answer. Besides, (and how fucked up is it that there’s a curl of jealousy under the thought?) it looks like Tiny has everything he needs. 


	67. Chapter 67

“So hey,” Clint said. “You’re here, I’m here, we’re sitting in a tree…”

Tony’s voice, amused, mocking, cut in over the earpieces, and Clint actually flinched. Like he’d forgotten what they were here for.

“Wow,” Tony said. “ _Smooth_ , Barton.”

Clint mumbled something offensive and weirdly specific, and Tony laughed in his weird crackly robot voice, and that would’ve all been fine if Clint hadn’t shifted his weight away from Bucky, away from the warmth all down Bucky’s side, like he was gonna go straddle somebody else’s branch and waste all that thigh-tightened clingy fabric on, like, an owl. Fuck that.

Bucky shifted forward smooth, careful not to shift his weight enough to move leaves more than was meteorolgically plausible. It wasn’t the quickest of manoeuvres to be honest, and it was kinda nice that Clint stayed still long enough for Bucky to be able to place a proprietary hand on the curve where his neck slid inside that needlessly sleeveless tac vest thing, for him to pull Clint forward.

Clint seemed kinda startled, for all the prep time that went into this, and Bucky grinned against his mouth at the soft noise he couldn’t help but make.

“I had no idea you were so easily persuaded, Barnes,” Tony said on comms, for all the damn team to hear.

“Hey, it’s been almost a century since grade school,” Bucky said, smug and smooth. “I’m always up for a refresher.”


	68. Chapter 68

Strands of hair were stuck to Bucky’s forehead, dark with sweat; Clint used the hand that was currently unoccupied to brush them gently away, sliding his palm down over sweat-slick skin until he was cupping the corner of Bucky’s jaw. It was enough to pull him a little forward so Clint could lean down to touch their mouths together - Bucky wasn’t quite coordinated enough to respond, though. 

Clint grinned against Bucky’s clumsy kiss, shifting his weight to one side so he could scan his eyes down the man’s fucking impossible body. He was utterly unashamed, legs spread, eyes closed, neck arching back as he desperately sucked in air when Clint curled his fingers just right. 

“How do you - _fuck_  - “ Bucky mumbled, luxuriating over the fricative, biting down on his lower lip. 

Clint shifted again, turned his wrist a little, bicep tensing against the sleeve of his shirt, and Bucky failed entirely at biting back the moan it wrenched out of him. 

“Snipers do it with perfect aim,” Clint said. 


	69. Chapter 69

“So. Slow and loving? Or hard and punishing?” 

Bucky blinked up at Clint, his brain struggling to process the words but mostly returning errors. 

“Hmm?”

“Best friends with the Black Widow, Barnes, you better believe my back rub game is strong.” 

“I just need -” he waved a hand vaguely. The thing, the reboot thing, the thing with the beds rather than the chair and the metal and the - wow. That way lay nightmares, and there was a distinct possibility he’d cry if his sleep was interrupted again. “Sleep,” he managed, vaguely proud that he’d remembered the word. 

“I get that,” Clint said, “I do, but your back is knottier than an escapologist’s wet dream and that does not a good sleep make.” 

“How’d you -?”

“Been watching.” The smile on Clint’s face kind of suggested that he’d’ve kept silent if Bucky were more awake, which was kind of a shame - if Bucky’d been more awake he might’ve had a chance of working out what the hell he meant. 

“Sure?” he asked eventually. He didn’t like asking for things, not unless he knew he could pay them back. 

“Sure,” he said. 

“Slow, then,” Bucky answered finally. “Slow but deep.” His voice dropped a little, half way into sleep already, and Clint’s warm hands soothing through his shirt paused and held, tightening the slightest bit in a stutter of morse code that Bucky was too damned tired to translate. 

“That’s how you like it, huh?” Clint asked, a little hoarse, and Bucky hummed a happy response, lost in the pleasure of Clint’s warm hands. 


	70. Chapter 70

There’s that point, that change of focus, that feeling in your gut - there’s that point where a kiss is just kind of inevitable. The stars align or something, someone tilts their head, someone else leans, and that’s it. Fireworks. Heavenly choirs. Name the cliche.

So Clint is trying not to take it too much to heart that the first time he tried to kiss Bucky Barnes they both end up bleeding.

It’s a small kind of comfort that they were trapped in a tiny cabin at the time on a ship that was steadily filling with water - ‘cos that’s the kind of life he _has_ these days, and his mercenary past never looked so good - and it was dark enough that Bucky wouldn’t have known what the headbutt meant.

“Fuck, Barton, watch what you’re-”

“Sorry,” he’d gasped out, lightheaded with the adrenaline and a little hysterical, “it’s a sign of affection.”

“Then maybe I wish you liked me a little less,” Bucky’d said, and Clint’s _don’t we all_ was lost in the crunch and screech of the breaking lock.

Clint couldn’t stop looking at the split in Bucky’s lip for days.

So maybe he was a little impulsive when it came to relationships, romance, statements of intent. In his defence he’d been pretty sure they were going to die at the time; radios that crap out on you and freezing water up to the waist do not a rational Hawkeye make. But impulsive had a mixed track record for him, and he hadn’t ever been good at working out when people were on the same page. He’d been slapped, kissed back, tasered, threatened with castration… married, one time. He was a hopeless romantic - emphasis on the hopeless - and he got that unanticipated kisses were an unwelcome thing. He was just really shit outta luck when it came to reading body language, apparently.

The second time, they were bickering about breakfast cereals, Clint put his hand on Bucky’s arm, Bucky’s eyes dropped to Clint’s mouth, he would swear blind there was a mutual lean… and Clint ended up face down on the kitchen floor in an arm lock that was threatening to dislocate something important.

“I don’t get it,” he said from under his arm. Natasha was sitting on his stomach, leaning back against his raised knees, and giving him precisely as much attention as she thought his problems deserved. From the sounds of it, she was watching the Lego Movie.

“This is not new, for you,” she said.

“I just,” he said, plaintive, “I thought we were getting on okay.”

“That’s what we’re calling it, these days?” She sighed, and wove her fingers through his.

“Barton, Widow,” a voice acknowledged them from the kitchen, and Tasha shifted her weight a little but there was a distant slam, like Bucky had gotten out of there like his ass was on fire.

“Huh,” she said.

“Huh?” He didn’t trust her tone.

“Try using your words,” she said, instead of anything more insightful, and made sure to elbow him in the gut as she got off the couch.

*

Clint paced back and forth in front of Bucky’s door for a good eight minutes before he finally knocked. He’d have avoided it all together if it weren’t for the decreasingly cryptic and increasingly ominous texts from Tasha. Apparently he’d used up his quota of whining, and she was looking for results. Eventually he just kinda flung himself at the door, slammed his fist into it out of sheer momentum, briefly debated fleeing the scene or pulling himself up into the ceiling vents in the moment or two it took Bucky to answer his door.

There was a little smile on his face, the kind that killed Clint dead, before it twisted into something that wasn’t quite so happy to see him.

“Hey, Bucky,” Clint said, rubbing his calloused palm across the back of his neck.

“Barton,” Bucky said, and -

“I thought we were on first name basis,” Clint said pathetically. “Tell me where I fucked up, okay, 'cos this is killing me.”

Bucky let out a long breath through his nose, but he stepped aside at least to let Clint in.

“I’m - clarifying lines,” Bucky said carefully, after a second, and Clint’s heart sank into his purple converse, more convenient for the kicking.

“Right,” he said. “Sorry. If I made you uncomfortable. Natasha said I should use my words, so thanks for saving me from that, at least.”

Bucky’s jaw firmed some, at the mention of Tasha.

“Tell her not to worry,” he said. “I ain’t stepping on anyone’s toes.”

“Nah,” said Clint, and tried on a grin that didn’t quite fit right. “Just my heart.”

He turned to the door and flinched back a little when Bucky’s fingers closed around his wrist, fast and uncoordinated enough to slam his hip into the door handle, which was definitely gonna bruise. Seemed appropriate.

“What?” Bucky said, enough urgency in his tone to make the answer seem important.

“Most people wait until we’re dating to dump me,” Clint told him, “but it’s cool that you’re ahead of the curve.”

“But you’re dating the Widow,” Bucky said, flat and somehow still kinda surprised.

Apparently the face Clint made at that did enough of his talking for him, because the smile came back to Bucky’s face, settled in for the long haul.

There’s that point, that change of focus, that feeling in your gut - there’s that point where a kiss is just kind of inevitable. The stars align or something, someone tilts their head, someone else leans, and that’s it. Fireworks. Heavenly choirs. Name the cliche.

Unfortunately Clint was too busy screwing up his face at the thought of dating his best friend and missed all of this. Didn’t stop Bucky pressing their mouths together, though, and maybe the darkness behind Clint’s screwed up eyelids sparkled, a little.


	71. Chapter 71

“Hey.” Clint’s voice was soft in the silent darkness, only the barest outlines of furniture visible in the diffuse light from the corridor. “Clint can’t come to the phone right now ‘cos his head’s about to split open, please try again tomorrow.”

Bucky took a second to fix positions in his mind, then closed the door behind him.

“You’re not supposed to be talking.”

“Wouldn’t be if you weren’t here,” Clint grumbled, then swallowed tightly in a way Bucky knew; he grabbed the trash can and added it to his armload on his way to the bed.

“Shh,” Bucky responded, and Clint huffed and fell silent.

Bucky skirted the edge of the bed and put down the trash can first, close to the head of the bed just in case. Next was the ice-cold bottle of water - he placed it on the bedside table and then (after a moment’s hesitation) gently grasped Clint’s hand and guided it to the gently sweating plastic. He’d had enough concussions to know that painkillers wouldn’t make a dent, but he’d grabbed an ice pack from the freezer and he placed it next to the bottle and guided Clint’s hand to that next, only just registering he hadn’t let go in between.

“Thanks,” Clint croaked out, and Bucky carefully rested his finger across the man’s lips.

Then he circled the bed again and, carefully, spreading his weight so the mattress didn’t jostle, he lay down at Clint’s back, holding out his phone - with the screen dimmed almost to nothing - so Clint could see the regular alarms he’d set for himself.

“…I’ve survived worse,” Clint said. “Why’re you - ?”

The thing was, Bucky thought he’d known. He’d thought it was concern, worry for a team mate, that it was down to the adrenaline punch of fear when he’d seen Clint fall. But truths that hid in light couldn’t be denied in darkness, apparently.

Bucky edged closer, careful and silent and slow, and leaned forward so he could press a whispered kiss against the vulnerable line of Clint’s throat.


	72. Chapter 72

Someone had come up with it, a moment of final irony, the number of the beast because that’s what they were - not just the shambles, but the breathers too, the things they’d done. If it wasn’t for Steve, if it wasn’t for his deep red thread of loyalty and love and belief tying them all together, he was pretty sure they’d be dead, or taken, or (him, mostly him) followed Rumlow and gone beast.

(He was scared, some days. He still might.)

The little green light on the top of the radio was all that was keeping Barnes on his feet, any more. Jury-rigged and falling apart and held together with rotting rubber bands, tuned to the frequency but only held there by sheer bloodymindedness; Steve had taken to calling the damned thing Bucky.

He was pretty sure it was gonna last longer than he was, though. Barnes emptied the last of the rusty tasting water into his mouth and settled himself against the support of a road sign that was somehow still standing.

“And this is Bucky Barnes signing off,” he said into the still-silent radio, its little green light fading and flickering in the last evening light. “And I leave you with this medley of ‘90s banjolele Christian funk, in the last fuck you to a uncaring universe. Thanks for listening.”

He’d start back towards camp any minute, he thought, sliding down the pole and resting his arms on his hitched up knees. He’d shove himself to his feet, and walk back through the waiting and hungry darkness, and hope to whatever gods were left to watch over this place that the other scouts had had more luck.

Any minute.

The crackle of the radio almost stopped his heart.

“Hey,” a voice said, low and kinda amused and _unfamiliar_ , fuck, someone _new_. “Long time listener, first time caller.”

And that. Fuck. That humour and that level of asshole in the midst of the goddamn zombie apocalypse made Bucky choke out a laugh and choke on the lump in his goddamn throat all at once.

“Where the fuck are you?” He said into the radio, listening to his voice shake and not giving a damn.

“Hey pretty,” the voice came back. There was a thud and a shower of dust; the ground by Bucky’s foot had sprouted an arrow of all fucking things. “Look up.”


	73. Chapter 73

“Sorry,” Bucky says, with the kind of charming smile that has Clint genuinely thinking about putting a ring on it, for claiming purposes if nothing else. “You seem like a swell guy - ”

 _Swell_ , Clint mouths to himself, amused. There’s something kinda hot about the times Bucky sounds a little like Steve; Clint is down to debauch.

“ - but I’m actually with someone.”

It’s been like this pretty much since they arrived in San Francisco, Fury-mandated leave that Clint had decided to spend with sun and Six Flags and his sexy as all hell guy. It’s been great for the free drinks - Bucky passes them over quicker when there are umbrellas, Clint’s kind of in a perpetual haze - but it’s a little wearing on the ego.

Clint kind of glances over, raises his hand in acknowledgement, gives a little grin. The guy is seriously hot, but Clint is secure in the knowledge that he’s got better arms.

“Souvenir shopping with your dad?” The guy asks sympathetically, and Clint’s mouth drops open. Bucky makes this kind of snort-choke noise at the back of his throat, and Clint’s stomach just _drops_.

The sun outside is blinding and Clint slips on his shades. He leans against the baked wall of the store, tips his head back and crosses his legs at the ankle, the picture of casual relaxation. Any observer would think he actually seems to get _more_ relaxed, the longer he stands there, but that’s just ‘cos stillness is a skill and no one can see his eyes.

“Hey,” a voice says to his right. Clint nods, acknowledgement. It’s no big deal, right? So the best thing is just not to -

“Sorry about that asshole,” Bucky says.

“Fuck it,” says Clint, and pastes on a passable smile. “I’m not the cradle snatcher, here.”

Bucky moves to stand in front of him, blocking out the sun, and it takes a second for Clint’s eyes to focus, for him to snort himself into laughter that Bucky reflects with his mile-wide charming grin.

The shirt is black with scratchy white letters, tag still in and visible creases from the shelf. DADDY ISSUES it says, block capitals.

It’s not a ring, maybe, but it’ll do for now.


	74. Chapter 74

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **WARNING for mention of domestic abuse (although none takes place)**

“Thanks for all your help, doc,” Bucky said and then, in the same tone, “I swear to god Barton if you get out of that damned wheelchair I’ll break your other leg.”

“Excuse me?” The doctor sounded faintly horrified, her cheeks blanching, and Bucky gave her his most charming grin.

“Kidding, I swear,” he said, and she gave him a sidelong look.

“Well if you could just come with me to fill in the last of the paperwork?” Bucky rolled his eyes but followed gamely, and Clint thought about getting out of the damned chair again for all of 30 seconds before a nurse in scrubs came over and crouched down by his side.

“Hey,” he said, “how’re you doing?”

“Peachy,” Clint said, and actually meant it. There were serous benefits to being an Avenger, to being funded by Tony Stark, and right now his favourite was unlimited jello. “This is nothing.” He gestured to his leg, to the cast he and Buck had already fought over, ‘cos Tasha signing first was a tradition that no relationship, no matter how important, was going to break.

Speaking of breaking, the nurse kinda looked like his heart had, a little, and Clint sank back in his chair in case emotions were headed his way.

“Hey,” the nurse said gently. “I’m Tialo. It’s great to meet you - ”

“Clint,” he responded, and the guy’s smile was kind of stunning.

“Clint. Just wanted to make sure you’ve got everything you need, okay? That you’re safe to go home.”

It was kind of an odd way of framing it, Clint thought.

“Yeah, I’m good,” he said, and smiled.  


It was a little painful, with the bruising. “Bucky’s here.”

“But he’s over with the doctor, right now,” Tialo said, and Clint turned to look but was distracted by Tialo’s light fingers against the back of his hand. “He’s not going to hear anything we talk about. If there’s anything you wanted to say?”

“No?” Clint said, a little wary now. If he wasn’t bruised all to hell and more than a little fragrant, he’d think he was getting hit on.

“Okay,” Tialo said, his smile a little crooked. “Okay, that’s fine. But I just - I have a number for you, in case you need it, okay?”

He went over to the nurses’ desk and grabbed a pretty purple leaflet from a stack.

“I’m not gonna ask you to take this with you,” Tialo said, returning, “but think about giving them a call.”

Clint flipped it over in his hands, curious. The NCADV, it was produced by, the National Domestic Viol-

“Oh hell no,” he said, shocked and appalled and looking up quickly to make sure Bucky wasn’t watching this. “No no no.”

“You’re safe here, Clint,” Tialo told him, and Clint snorted out a laugh.

“I’m not safe anywhere,” he said, then hurried to add, “because I’m an _Avenger_ , not because - Jesus, where were you guys when I lived with my dad?”

“Clint - ”

“No, I appreciate the intention, I seriously do, you people do amazing work. But that guy over there saved me from getting crushed by a building earlier today. The only way he’s gonna hurt me is if he comes to his senses and breaks my heart, okay?”

“Well I’m glad to hear that,” Tialo told him, and folded the leaflet, tucked it into his pocket. “Stay safe - ” he squinted a little and then said, uncertainly, “Iron Fist?”

“Sure,” Clint said, waving him off. “Why not?”

Bucky returned, without the doctor this time, and wheeled Clint toward the exit.

“What was that about?” He said, easy.

“We were talking about how pretty you are,” Clint said, “how you’re going to break my heart.”

Bucky came around to the front, crouched down and put his hands on the arm rests, looking up at him earnestly.

“I would never hurt you, Clint,” he said, and Clint shifted forward to kiss his forehead.

“I’ve never doubted that for a second,” he said, meaning it for maybe the first time in his life.


	75. Chapter 75

“Bucky!” Steve yelled, poking at the eggs to see if it was time to toast. “Hey, Buck!”

“Shh!” Bucky hissed, closing his bedroom door careful and quiet behind him. “Can you keep your damn voice down?”

Bucky was not a stranger to crazy bed-hair, but this morning’s was particularly spectacular, and there were a couple of bruises along the line of his neck. Steve grinned, genuinely happy and a lot amused, didn’t even have to say anything to have Bucky scowling.

“You got someone in there?”

“Shove it, nosy,” Bucky said, but there was a little curl to the corner of his mouth that he couldn’t bite down on.

“Special someone?” Steve asked, tried not to sound too obviously hopeful. He was for anything that brought the smile back to Bucky’s face.

“Maybe,” Bucky said, and the little tease of a grin settled in and made a home for itself. Steve couldn’t help grinning widely in response, and Bucky folded his arms. “Don’t, Stevie, okay? We’re takin’ it slow.”

“Uh-huh,” Steve said, and Bucky batted away the spatula Steve poked at his neck. “Looks like it.”

“This’s been coming a while,” Bucky said, and his smile turned soft and kind of tender, and it wasn’t a smile Steve knew so well. “I don’t wanna mess this up.”

“Hey,” Steve said, abandoned the eggs for a second and hauled him into a hug. “She’d be crazy to turn you down.”

Bucky turned his face against Steve’s neck, took a deep breath, let it out slow.

“He,” he said.

“Huh?”

“He’d be crazy,” Bucky said, and pulled away to eye Steve’s expression. Steve tried to convey support through eyebrows, and Bucky laughed and punched him in the arm.

“He gonna be wanting breakfast?” Steve asked, all casual.

“I dunno,” Bucky said, and looked for a second unaccountably nervous. “Guess I’ll go ask.”

He snagged the coffee pot on his way into his room - the whole thing, didn’t bother stopping for mugs.

Steve gaped.

“Holy - it’s _Clint_?”


	76. Chapter 76

Bucky stepped through the door and onto something that crunched under his shoe. The apartment was like a bomb site, scattered toys and clothes and a houseplant wearing a set of fuzzy antlers, and he carefully settled his face into a frown even as something warmed and settled inside him. 

“It would be unethical, right?” called a voice from the living room, and Bucky trod careful, dainty, unusually catlike, to avoid crushing any more of Princess Natalia’s endlessly bright plastic accessories. 

“Probably,” Bucky said, safely reaching the door frame and leaning gratefully against it. “What in particular?” 

Clint was a sprawl of exhaustion on the couch, one leg over the arm and the other foot on the floor. His hand was on his belly where his shirt had ridden up, and where once that would’ve been a deliberate tease, now it was more that he didn’t have the energy left to pull it back down. 

Didn’t stop Bucky from enjoying the view. 

“Es’s decided she wants to run away to join the circus,” Clint said, idly. “Half tempted to encourage her.”

Bucky picked his way over and bent to drop a kiss on Clint’s forehead, running fingers through his hair in a bid to dislodge the cheerios. 

“She’d get bored,” he said. “After this mess? Workin’ with wild animals and acrobats and a bunch of clowns’d be a cakewalk.”

“Maybe _I’ll_ run away to the circus,” Clint said, darkly. 

“Nah,” Bucky said, wandering through to the kitchen - which was his territory, and therefore the neatest part of the whole damned apartment - and putting the coffee on. “I liked it, gonna put a ring on it, you’re stuck with me now.” 

“Yeah, someday,” Clint groaned as he heaved himself to his feet, and Bucky listened to the faint noises as he started to pick up after their whirlwind daughter. 

“Someday _soon_ ,” Bucky insisted, and smiled a little at the dismissive snort. 

“We’re - doing okay, right?” Clint said after a moment. “I mean - running away to join the circus is a normal childhood urge, right?”

“You did,” Bucky said, and there was a long silence after that, filled only with the gentle bubbling of water. 

“I didn’t exactly have a normal childhood,” Clint said. 

“You’re not your dad, Clint,” Bucky told him, knowing exactly where this conversation was going, knowing exactly where it had gone a hundred times before. Back when Es had been a tiny scrap of a thing in a cot that seemed a thousand times too big Clint had been almost too scared to touch her, afraid that his genes would somehow roughen his hands. 

“No, I know,” too quick, “I just -”

“You just showed her a couple of your trick shots,” Bucky said, “showed her how you can walk on your hands, and there is nothing that little girl loves more than her dad. Ain’t a surprise that she wants to be like you.” 

More silence, but this time it was the gently filled silence of carefully trained feet, and Bucky didn’t startle when arms slipped around his waist, when a kiss was pressed against the spot where his shoulder curved up to his neck. 

“Barnes family circus,” Clint said, breath warm on Bucky’s ear. “’s got a ring to it.” 

“I claim ringmaster.” 

Bucky took the little box out of his pocket and put it on the counter, the gentle gleam of gold like sunshine, like warmth, like home.


	77. Chapter 77

Clint blinked awake, eyes sticky and mouth dry, and registered the _white_  and the _clean_  and the _uncomfortable_  before the pain even hit. 

“Shit,” he said, croaky and low, and wondered exactly what was broken this time. Right now the pain was kinda diffuse and he was too drugged to pinpoint a location. His left arm seemed to be working okay, at least, and he tried not to move anything too much as he reached for the glass of water on the side table. 

He couldn’t hold in a grunt of pain as his torso twisted a little, and there was an echoing snort from the corner of the room. His eyes flicked over immediately, in time to see Bucky lever himself to his feet, eyes bloodshot and stubble threatening to take over. 

“Hey,” he said, still sounding like rusty machinery. 

“I love you.” 

Clint blinked. 

“Sorry, what?” he ground out, then swallowed painfully and reached for the water again. Bucky circled the bed quickly, pushed the cup at him with a slightly shaking hand. 

“Hey,” Clint said again, a little clearer, a little more like himself. “Am I high, or did you just -”

“Yes,” said Bucky, his eyes not meeting Clint’s, scanning instead down his torso where the sheet had slipped down, his eyes hopping around from bruise to bandage. “And… yes.” 

“Huh.” Clint settled himself back against the pillows, moving gingerly and slow, and considered Bucky for a second. He looked like shit - as much like shit as someone with Bucky’s face could look - and awkward, and the jaw clench looked a little like fear. “So they moved fast in the ‘30s, huh?” 

“No.” Bucky’s jaw clenched a little tighter, and he looked like he was forcing the word out. “Alberta.” 

Clint’s brain kinda fizzed for a second. Maybe a part of it was the drugs, but - 

They’d kissed. On a rooftop, in the rain, because this was some kinda romance movie shit, and the bow and the gun and the various explosives still hadn’t managed to flip the genre. Clint had grinned and turned to say something which died in his throat at the look on Bucky’s face, the soft, the _smile_ , and leaning in had just seemed a natural sort of conclusion to that expression. Like fuckin’ gravity. Thing was, the rooftop had been - even with the level of stubble, the suggestion of how long Clint had been in here - a week ago at _most_ , and Alberta had been… 

“Two _years_?” 

Bucky shrugged, looking away, and Clint grabbed his hand and tugged on it a little. 

“Two years, Buck? What the _fuck_?” 

“Promised myself I’d tell you when you woke up,” Bucky told him, and the sharp uneven edge to his voice meant the _if_  was implied. Explained why quite so many parts of Clint hurt. Didn’t explain what the fuck was happening here. 

“I don’t -”

“I wasn’t okay,” Bucky said, finally meeting Clint’s eyes, the stormy blue a little scared, a little vulnerable, a lot resigned, like he’d made a decision he wasn’t happy with and was waiting for the fall out. “I wasn’t _me_ yet. I didn’t want to put that on you.”

“You can put anything on me,” Clint said, earnest. “You could’ve - shit, _Alberta_.” 

“I get if that’s creepy -”

“I’m just thinking about all the boning I’ve missed,” Clint said, too-honest, morphine mouth, and Bucky snorted a little and squeezed his hand. He looked… relieved, maybe, but there was still that resignation, which was a lot to put on a guy. Clint tugged on his hand and pulled him off balance, tried to stretch up but settled for sliding his hand to shoulder, to neck, and pulling. The kiss tasted like shit, was weird and dry and soft and careful, felt like nothing much weighed against what it might mean. 

“I’m - not there yet,” Clint said, and Bucky flinched. 

“I’m not expecting -”

“But I figure,” Clint interrupted, “I’m on the right track.” 


	78. Chapter 78

His nightmares used to be what had _been_. As bad as they were - believe it, they _were_ \- there was at least reassurance pretty much at the moment of waking. As soon as he saw the painted ceiling, the wall of windows, New York spread out like a galaxy below his feet, it was an easy enough thing to take in another breath.

As he learned names, though, as he started to recall the shape of the man he’d been, the nightmares shifted and warped and extended dark tentacles and pulled him back in.

Bucky dreamed of being alone now. It was absurd that his most paralysing fears were so opposed; the bright metal swarming of a Hydra lab set against the dark emptiness of a ruined tower.

It was certainly harder to shift. It was harder to get his lungs back to working. He found himself becoming familiar with the early morning offerings of the television, infomercials and bright-toothed hosts far too happy for the hour of day.

As soon as the first person shuffled in for coffee or bacon or the jury-rigged shielding device Bucky could wander back to his room and try for another hour’s sleep, but the lack was starting to tell on him.

One morning he found himself following the archer, Barton, trailing hopelessly behind him as the man carried a full coffee pot back to his room.

“You okay?” Barton said eventually, doing him the courtesy of not turning to see whatever wrecked landscape sleeplessness and nightmares had made of Bucky’s face.

“Fine,” Bucky said shortly, and pushed past to head for his own rooms.

He found himself back there, that night. Barton’s room was the closest to his, and there was something so solid about the man. If it didn’t get rid of the nightmares - Bucky didn’t have hopes that anything would - sitting outside his door at least loaned him a little of that solidity, let him tip his head back and rest.

It was only when the door opened, on the fourth consecutive night, that Bucky realised his behaviour maybe wasn’t what it should be.

He scrambled around and got to his feet. Barton was standing there, shirtless and purple boxers, and Bucky stared fixedly at the door frame for lack of anywhere else appropriate to let his eyes settle.

“C'mon in,” Barton said, scratchy and low with bracketing sleep. “I’ve got a couch.”

“I have my own bed,” Bucky said, confused.

“Yeah,” Clint said, “but this way I can leave my door open and you can listen to me breathe like a creeper. Figured that might help.”

Bucky’s heart gave a little jolt in his chest, and when Barton jerked his head impatiently, he followed him inside.

(And didn’t leave, even when the nightmares became less frequent. He did, eventually, make the move to the bed.)

 

 


	79. Chapter 79

Being adopted by Clint Barton was a little like being beaten to death with a throw pillow.

“Go with it,” the Widow had said, “he’s missing Kate.”

Bucky had no idea who Kate was - although he knew, by now, that she was ‘perfect’ and 'smart’ and 'the actual Hawkeye’ - but he was questioning her judgement wherever she was. He wasn’t sure why someone would _leave_ this.

Sleeping on Clint’s couch brought with it first dibs on the newspaper in the morning. Brought coffee, black as sin, in a star-covered mug that had showed up in Clint’s cupboard without a word. Brought a dog, heavy and happy and musty-smelling, weighing down his feet or his lap as he sat in the evenings, always obedient to where Clint told it to go.

“Hey Katie-Kate,” Clint told his phone, a little grin wrinkling the band aid on his cheek, “you are beautiful and perfect as ever and I love you,” and then he listened as Kate talked like the grin was his resting expression. Bucky tried not to let his look linger too long, but eventually he had to go take Lucky for a walk, just for the sake of plausible denial.

Clint brought him pierogi and beer and a pretty freakin’ _stone_ he’d found when he took Lucky for walks. He bought some kinda kids’ de-tangling shampoo and left it conspicuously in the shower. Clint lifted Bucky’s feet when he was sprawled out watching a movie on the couch, manoeuvred himself carefully under, put them on his lap, then started to idly massaging them as things exploded on screen.

 _he’s missing Kate_ Bucky told himself, determined, but the compliments were seriously the last straw.

“Such a nice young man,” Mrs Lei said, cornering Clint when he had the front door half open, “he helped me up with my groceries, so considerate!”

Bucky didn’t move from the couch; she’d already talked his ear off once today, and now he knew the names of all her grandchildren.

“Oh yeah,” Clint said, “Bucky’s basically perfection in human form,” all casual.

“And so _handsome!_ ” Mrs Lei added, and Clint laughed.

“Hot like the surface of the sun,” he agreed, tone matter of fact like it was the truth. “He should be in a gallery someplace.”

“You hold onto this one,” she told him, and when Clint walked through the door his cheeks were still pink.

“I’m not Kate,” Bucky said, and Clint whirled around and grabbed at his chest like a startled maiden aunt, which in other circumstances would be _hilarious_.

“This is true,” Clint said, once he’d recovered. “You’re _Bucky_. You remember, we’ve been over this.”

Bucky pushed himself to his feet, paced away from Clint and back towards him, one hand pushed into his hair.

“I’m not your _girlfriend_ , Clint,” he ground out. “You can’t say things like - ”

Clint’s face was screwed up into an expression of blended disgust and horror.

“Kate is a shining perfect girl child who could kick my ass six ways to Sunday and also legitimately be my daughter,” Clint said. “Why the hell would I be dating her?”

“But -” Bucky said. “Natasha said you were missing her, that that was why you were being so nice to -”

Clint turned to start unpacking his groceries, tossing a bag of spinach - which he hated - towards the refrigerator.

“You,” Clint said after a second, “could also kick my ass six ways to Sunday. Plus the whole hot as hell, stubbed perfection, heart of gold thing. Why the hell would you be dating _me_?”

Bucky took the packet of noodles out of Clint’s hand and tossed them onto the counter behind him. Stepping in close and watching the blue of Clint’s eyes darken was the best kind of ego trip.

“Pretty much because you’re beautiful and perfect,” Bucky said, thoughtful, and ducked in to press his mouth to Clint’s while his eyes were still startled and wide.

(For the moment, the rest could remain implied.)


	80. Chapter 80

There is a lot that Bucky’s had to put up with in the tower. 

He’s nearly broken his ankle tripping over discarded shoes that cost more than his apartment. He’s been covered in foam by over-excited robots confused by his higher body temperature. He’s been subjected to reality TV shows that slowly melted his brain out of ears while he was getting his fingernails painted by an aggressive brunette with glasses and a steel jaw. 

(She did them a red so dark it was almost black. They looked pretty incredible.)

He’s been ambushed, set fire to, held at gunpoint, held at taserpoint, hulked at, _Bruced_ at, and has seen Tony naked more times than any man should have to bear. One time he stole Thor’s last poptart and had to move to Jersey for a week. 

And yet, somehow, all of that pales into insignificance. 

Clint Barton is average height, average blond, eyes that are - sure - a beautiful blue. Clint Barton has shoulders any sex-lovin’ human wants to throw their legs over, has biceps that melt panties, has a smile like the kick of a mule. 

Clint Barton has a workshop, apparently, where he practices hobbies. ‘cos compound bows are god’s gift to archery, and fiberglass and carbon fibre - especially in endless combinations with various woods - have done a hell of a lot to advance the art. But apparently sometimes a guy wants to try something traditional, and no one else was gonna touch his equipment in the circus. 

Bucky listens to the half-apologetic explanation with half an ear, ‘cos the majority of his attention’s otherwise occupied. Sure, there’s the tank, and the shoulders, and the arms saw-dusted and gleaming a little with sweat, but there’s also the beauty of his fingers as he carefully planes and shapes, as something takes form under his hands. There’s the concentration written in the little lines between his eyebrows, somehow bolstered not undermined by the peace the rest of his expression attests. 

Bucky’s had to put up with a lot in the tower, but watching, not touching, is the worst kind of hell. 


	81. Chapter 81

“It’s like watching one of those nature documentaries,” Tony’s voice was impressively quiet. Most of them didn’t know he could do that. “Not one of those ones that’re narrated by old stoned Jarvis, more like one of those man vs nature types.”

“Where people are all curled up and cuddling with the tigers?” That was Sam, amused and almost pleased sounding.

“Leave them alone,” Bruce said, the kinda absent that suggested he was reading something with more numbers than words, more words than sense. “They look happy.”

Bucky was happy. It wasn’t _familiar_ yet, so every moment of it was to be treasured and clung to, but it wasn’t the only thing.

Clint was sleeping, breathing slow and steady against the top of Bucky’s head. Bucky was tucked up close, head under Clint’s chin, a little curled in on himself to let him in closer. Their legs were tangled together and their hands and interwoven fingers rested on Clint’s chest, their other arms wrapped tight around each other. Somehow, here, defensible had become unimportant and here, somehow, he still felt safe. Safe enough to allow himself to tangle and interweave, to trust himself and someone else enough to duck his head and close his eyes.

“Here we see _winterus soldiera_ ,” Tony whispered, attempting some kind of accent although it wasn’t clear which, “in its natural habitat. Most wouldn’t suspect this fearsome creature of being capable of ‘snuggles’, but the calming presence of the Barton has soothed the great beast.”

Bucky shifted incrementally, pulling his metal hand from behind Clint’s back. He snapped it up, deadly speed, and flipped Tony the most emphatic of middle fingers.

The crash and yelp as Tony tripped over the coffee table didn’t manage to wake Clint; Bucky could let him live.


	82. Chapter 82

Adrenaline’s adrenaline, no matter the trigger, and Bucky smiles fiercely as he pushes forward, tilting his head and seeing the second’s widening eyes before Clint’s mouth is opening to his. He curls the metal hand around the small of Clint’s back, hiding it and protecting him from the rough brickwork simultaneously. Clint arches away from the cool metal, arches into Bucky, and Bucky bites down on his lip.

He catalogs, categorises sound, listens to the distant thump and clatter of running feet even when he’d rather dedicate himself to remembering the exact tone of Clint’s bitten off groan when Bucky cradles (protects) the back of his head, tugs a little on his hair. Clint rocks forwards tentatively and Bucky presses back, presses the whole of himself into this, the slick heat and perfect solidity of him, the way it feels to be wrapped in his arms.

When Clint finally pulls away Bucky has to make a conscious effort to slide his hand onto Clint’s shoulder, safe territory under black Kevlar, to stop his hand curling gentle against his neck. This. This may have been an error. This may have screwed him over but good.

“I,” Clint says, and his eyes are still wide and his cheeks are flushed, and the slick red of his lower lip is what dreams are made of, what Bucky’s dreams have been made of, what Bucky’s dreams may not deviate from again, “I think they’re gone.”

Is it wrong to want the angry thud of returning feet, the risk of danger and death, if it’d only give him an excuse to lean in again?


	83. Chapter 83

Clint is a heavy weight on top of him, heavy and overly warm and more than a little drunk, which Bucky never really thought he’d envy.

“Hey Bucky,” Clint says, and he buries his nose in Bucky’s neck like he feels he’s owed something, or like there’s something he can’t survive without.

“…hey Clint.”

It’s not that Bucky means to be distant, it’s just that this isn’t in the parameters they’ve so far defined. Bucky’s big on rules now, socially defined delineations of order, moral guidelines with which he agrees.

“I like you,” Clint says, and beams at him like an idiot, like a child, like a man in love.

Bucky cups his cheek and tugs him just enough to pull him down for a kiss, like the barest pressure won’t change the universe on accident.

“I guess I like you too,” he says, and wishes he didn’t feel like all of the above.


	84. Chapter 84

“Quick,” Clint said, wide-eyed and frantic, “hide me!”

“Under the bed,” Bucky said immediately, still blinking sleep out of his eyes. Clint scrambled gracelessly, kicking the covers out of his way, carpet friction dragging his sweatpants down a little as he commando crawled. Bucky tried not to look at the small of his back; Jesus, it was like Victorians and ankles.

He shut his door and pondered getting back inside the nest of blankets and pillows that he’d somehow formed around him as he slept, but just at that moment there was a polite knock on his door, followed by a very tiny swear from under the bed.

“Friend Barnes,” Thor said, when Bucky dragged the door open again, scowling with all the fury of 7am. “Has the archer sought refuge with you?”

Thor was looking annoyingly put together for the time of day: hair brushed, weirdly fixed smile, round red sucker mark on his forehead…

“Target practice, huh?” Bucky said sympathetically. Last week it’d been him and magnetic letters, he’d woken up with _roses are red clovers are lucky_ along the length of his arm. Clint didn’t deal well with down time.

“He will only be maimed lightly,” Thor agreed reassuringly.

“Well I sure hope you find him,” Bucky said, and he could almost feel the mattress sag behind him in relief.

“You’re an asshole, Barton,” he said, once his door was safely closed.

“Mhmm,” Clint responded absently, and there was the sound of… turning pages?

_Fuck._

“Get the fuck out of my room,” Bucky said, dark and angry and hideously embarrassed. He could feel the heat rising in his cheeks, and he impotently clenched his fists.

“Now I’ve found the good shit?” Clint said, incredulous. “Are you kidding?”

As porn mags went, it was the softest possible core, all hints and teases and fucking _kissing_ , fucking _nothing_ , and it wouldn’t even be incriminating if it weren’t tucked so carefully away under his mattress.

“Fuck you,” Bucky said miserably, and there was a long moment’s silence from under the bed.

“If you want,” Clint said thoughtfully, slithering out with the magazine all curled up on his hand. He was covered in dust and it looked like there was a spiderweb in his hair, and he was still, always, the best thing Bucky’d seen. “But I think maybe you’re looking for something else.”

“Don’t,” Bucky said, but he tipped his chin and he didn’t step back, and Clint took that as the permission he’d intended it to be, slid his hand around to gather the hair at the nape of Bucky’s neck and kissed him, slow and lush and generous. Kissed him perfect and gentle, like someone in a magazine.


	85. Chapter 85

There’s a slam, a clatter, the soft heavy sound of Clint’s jacket thudding against the wall. No noise for the bow and quiver, because no mood could ever be bad enough for Clint to disrespect _those_ , but the noises resume when he tugs off his boots and tosses them over to the door. 

“Bad day?” Bucky calls through, and Clint groans loud enough to be heard from the bedroom. 

“Bad doesn’t even come close to - people are _idiots_ , Buck, and I am rapidly approaching my very last fuck - “

His eyes go satisfyingly wide when he appears in the doorway, when he sees Bucky waiting on his bed. 

Clint’s shirts are always a little stretched out across the shoulders for him, necklines a little loose from the way Clint’s always tugging at them, and Clint’s eyes drop straight to where the stretched out neck hangs low at the collarbone, rests there hot before tracing over thin-washed cotton down to where he’s letting his fingers rest just under the waistband of black boxer-briefs. 

“Well if you’re looking for suggestions of what to do with it,” he says, and there’s a whole world of wonderful in the curve of Clint’s grin. 


	86. Chapter 86

“Hey,” Bucky whispers against the skin just in front of Clint’s ear, “hey, hey, what do you need?”

Clint keeps his face turned away but tugs on Bucky’s arms until they’re pressed tight around him, pulling Clint back against his chest, and then he tangles their fingers together and folds their hands over his stomach, tying himself down. Tying himself to Bucky.

There’s a fine trembling in all of his muscles, but he still bares the nape of his neck, lets him lay claim with breath and tongue and teeth. It’s a beautiful vulnerability that lays Bucky wide open, cracked straight through to his heart.

Bucky has always needed to be needed, would give every last bone of him to please someone else, but there’s been so little left of him since the departure of the Soldier, and what little there is has been scratched deeply and scraped thin. He was afraid for so long to let anyone close enough to need anything he could offer, in case it turned out he couldn’t offer enough.

But he never hesitates to press his mouth to Clint’s skin, to whisper gentle words and offers and offerings, because the answer to his _hey_ , to his _what do you need?_ has only and ever been _you._


	87. Chapter 87

Clint may have actually made Captain America cry, which was a new low for him.

The guy - Bucky, apparently, ‘cos that was the only coherent thing they’d managed to get out of Steve - was looking increasingly freaked out. He still had his arm slung around Steve, but his pretty blue eyes were wide and the fist around fabric looked more panicked than anything.

“Hey,” he said, nudging Tony in the side, “think you can peel your boyfriend off him long enough for a shower?” 'Cos, no lie, all the lord’s bone structure wouldn’t make up for the ripe smell of him. That’d been the entire foundation of Clint’s offer, alongside the hunting knife he gave him in case the deal sounded too sketchy. Self preservation and Clint weren’t exactly on speaking terms.

“You’re letting him use your shower?” Tony asked, kinda doubtful.

“Refrigerator and couch, too,” Clint said. “He followed me home, mom, can I keep him?”


	88. Chapter 88

“Are you kidding me with this shit?”

Clint grins and the guy behind the counter groans, swears under his breath in deference to all the children present. Or at least, Bucky assumes they’re present, since he can’t see anything past the armful of brightly colored and probably dangerously flammable fake fur he’s holding. 

“Please, man,” the stallholder says, “go try the freakin’ water guns for a bit, go on a damn carousel, stop taking my shit.” 

There’s the gentle thud of another dart landing, and then Clint’s callused fingers are carefully peeling at a couple of Bucky’s, pulling them away from where they’re pressed hard into sawdust-stuffed neon so he can tuck another tiny fluffball into his hand. 

“The water guns do have unicorns,” Clint mused. “Whaddaya reckon, Buck, you a unicorn kinda guy?” 

“I hate you more every second,” Bucky tells him. “I’m gonna smother you with these fuckin’ things in your sleep.” 

“Well,” says Clint, all carefully casual and painfully fake. “I mean, any time you want to stay over…” 

“I don’t know about you, but threats of murder aren’t normal when someone’s makin’ eyes at you.” 

“Yeah,” Clint says, “they pretty much are for me.” 

“This explains so much about you,” Bucky says, and stays appropriate for the family friendly environment by not commenting loudly on how it explains a lot about their early sex life, too, and Bucky’s developing Pavlovian reaction to gun fire. 

“Yeah, probably,” Clint says, and he’s sounding a little subdued. 

“Sure, I’ll stay tonight,” Bucky tells him, easy as breathing. 

“You - ? Oh.” There’s a smile in his voice. “Yeah, that’s good.” 

“I’ll line them all up so their tiny beady black eyes are watching you while you sleep.” 

“I think that’s maybe the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me,” Clint says, solemn, and then carefully unearths Bucky (from under a minion, a violently green teddy bear, and something Bucky thinks is meant to be maybe chocolate ice cream?) so he can give him a cotton-candy flavored kiss. 


	89. Chapter 89

Bucky sometimes feels like he’s vibrating apart, some frequency that no one else can hear, high-pitched whine in the back of his head. He holds himself together with training and bruised skin and tightly-wrapped armor and tries not to think about who the shrapnel’s going to take down when he finally goes. 

It’s dark outside, the middle of the night dark that swallows all light, that somehow impossibly makes the windowless gym with its flickering fluorescence seem shadowed. His sneakers are squeaking on the wooden floor and his breath is rasping as he pounds the hell out of the heavy bag, proving a point somehow about solidity. The opening door clatters across the specific sort of silence that is impossibly woven out of the familiar sounds, and Bucky stills, grabs the bag and holds onto it. 

“Hey,” Clint says. He makes no bones about it, not like Steve or Natasha or Sam, just walks straight over with his hands tucked into plaid pajama pockets, eyes slipping over the dripping sweat and slow-healing bruised knuckles without judgement. 

“I’m fine,” Bucky says. 

“And I’m on Bucky duty,” Clint says with a shrug. Bucky lets out a harsh snort of a laugh and shoulders past the heavy bag, the solid pain of slamming into it somehow grounding. 

Clint ambles after him, the slow pad of bare feet grating in its familiar unfamiliarity. 

“You gonna follow me into the shower too?” Bucky asks. 

“Gotta say I would not be averse,” Clint says, and Bucky’s stride falters slightly, barely noticeable but still damning. It makes him angrier, and he runs a defiantly steady hand through his hair and then yanks off his shirt, flinging it into a corner of the locker room on his way through to the showers. 

“Walk walk fashion baby,” Clint calls after him, and Bucky gives him the finger. 

Needle-sharp water cools his skin, setting up a fine trembling.  _Keep it together,_ he thinks.


	90. Chapter 90

Bucky was staring down at his MP3 player and frowning, ‘cos somehow his running playlist had segued into some weird indie shit and totally thrown him off his groove. So he only caught the movement from the corner of his eye, couldn’t catch himself in time to prevent himself tripping over the leash. He lost his balance entirely, braced for impact, but it was sooner and warmer than he’d anticipated.

“…rry,” the guy was saying when he yanked the earbuds out of his ears, “my dog is a half blind asshole.” His hands were big and calloused against the skin of Bucky’s shoulders, and his mouth flooded with saliva at the sight of the guy’s fuckin’ obscene arms.

“Hey,” he said, “us disabled fuckwits have to stand together.”

The guy snorted out a laugh, his nose wrinkling adorably, and maybe Bucky was seeing that from closer than he should 'cos he hadn’t pushed away from the guy’s chest yet, was kinda revelling in being saved like a damsel in distress, but that was between him and the logo on the guy’s shirt that had cracked with the stretching, _jesus_.

“Yeah, that’s pretty much why I stole him,” he said, turning his head so Bucky could see the purple aids behind his ears.

“You have a habit of taking things that aren’t yours?” He said.

“Dunno,” the guy said, and gave a sheepish smile, running his hand through his straw blond hair. “Gimme your number and find out?”


	91. Chapter 91

Barton, the archer, was staring intently at him, brow furrowed. Bucky glared back, and usually his glare did not inspire a grin that delighted. Barton had the grin of a child, wide open and honest with a little of the devil in it. He reached forward like he was going for a handshake, then his hand darted up to flick Bucky on the forehead, _hard_. 

“ _Ow_ , asshole!” 

Barton exchanged a look - a weirdly smug and strangely hopeful look - with Romanov, and then he turned and grinned at Bucky again, bit his lower lip. 

“But am I _your_  asshole?” he said, and words like that should never be said with such meaning, so intent. Words like that should never be said at all, frankly, and Bucky - who had had them scrawled across his side for as long as he could remember, who had looked for any excuses throughout his life not to take off his damned shirt - swore faintly. 

“Due to his words, Clint has taken to assaulting all people he finds attractive on first meeting,” Romanov said, dryly. “It is a foolish plan but admittedly hilarious at parties.” 

“Mostly everyone just thinks I’m - y’know,” Clint said, gesturing to the inside of his forearm where Bucky’s first words to him were neatly printed, and the hopeful look on his face was dying away. 

Bucky cleared his throat. 

“My asshole,” he said. And words like that should never be said with such meaning, so intent. 


	92. Chapter 92

Clint leans over and smacks a kiss onto Bucky’s cheek, then whoops as Bowser immediately runs off the side of the rainbow road and Toad takes a triumphant lead. 

“Ha! In your _face_ , Barnes!” 

“Hey, get back here,” Bucky says, low and intent, and Clint promptly drops three bananas in front of Bowser and turns to grin but - 

Huh. 

Looks like Bucky wasn’t actually talking to _Toad_. 

He hadn’t registered more than warm and stubble, the millisecond he’d had his mouth pressed to Bucky’s cheek. Warmth is a hell of an understatement when you’re talking Bucky’s mouth. Bucky’s focused, determined, licking his way into Clint’s mouth and cupping his face, leaning forward and forcing him backwards to accommodate, kneeling up on the couch as he lays Clint back against the arm rest. 

The angle gets awkward pretty quickly but pulling away would be some kinda mortal sin. Bucky swings his leg over to straddle Clint, still pushed up on his knees, and Clint runs his hands up Bucky’s thighs and around to his ass, trying to pull him down against him, trying to get some of the friction that Bucky’s unbelievable mouth is making him crave. 

Clint’s controller is stuck somewhere under him, digging into his spleen maybe, but he can’t bring himself to stop this long enough to fish it out. He’s just gotta hope that Toad’s distressed wailing in the background doesn’t start something Pavlovian. 


	93. Chapter 93

“You’re a terrible cook,” Bucky said, fishing out a noodle and throwing it at the wall. Clint didn’t respond, still chewing on his lower lip. Bucky nudged him. “What, no comeback? No ‘fight me?”

It was Clint’s automatic response, every freaking time anyone said anything he disagreed with. Tony’s opinions on pineapple on pizza. Steve’s assertions that he was better at pool. Natasha’s insistence that she would win any and all fights with Clint. But mostly, mostly he aimed it at Bucky. Yelled from the shower or mumbled in a hospital bed or slurred when still sweaty and coming down from an orgasm. 

He hadn’t said it in a couple days, though, and Bucky had a certain uneasiness settling into the pit of his stomach. 

“Yeah,” Clint said, poking absently at the sauce and not looking at Bucky. “About that.” 

“This better not be a relationship talk,” Bucky said, switching off the burners and turning to face Clint, his heart making a game attempt at scaling his windpipe. “You suck at relationship talks.” 

“Fight me,” Clint said, and then rubbed the back of his neck and fished something out of his pocket, flipping the little box open with a sheepish grin. “Fight me forever?” 


	94. Chapter 94

“Hey, no,” Clint had said, easy and smiling, “no big deal. Just figured I’d ask.” Like it’s that easy, like it’s just something people _do_. Which - Bucky guesses it is, obviously it is, but he’s so used to being the one to - truth is he’s never been the one to be asked out before, and he’d reacted badly. He’d reacted _incredulously_ , like it was something outside the realms of possibility, and Clint had done a poor job of hiding the hurt for all of a millisecond before the cheerful mask had snapped into place. 

And now Bucky’s watching Clint talking to a guy across the bar, watching his easy smile and relaxed pose, watching the way they’re easing closer with every drink, and if he’s honest he feels a little sick with himself. 

He knocks his head back against the wood-paneled wall and figures this has got to be his last drink, that heading home is going to be an act of self-preservation sooner rather than later. 

Bucky’s just drained his bottle and is about to scoot out when Clint drops into the booth next to him, trapping him in. 

“Hey,” he says, and his warm smile hasn’t changed, the look in his eyes hasn’t changed, and he doesn’t hesitate to drape an arm across Bucky’s shoulders like that doesn’t send sensation shivering down Bucky’s spine. “Hey, you’re not leaving?”

“Didn’t want to cramp your style,” Bucky says, and Clint laughs. 

“That is not something I’ve ever been accused of having,” he says. “Stay for another drink?” 

“I can’t, Clint.” Clint’s fingers have wrapped around the collar of his jacket, holding him in place, and Bucky takes his hand to try and ease them free. They wrap around Bucky’s hand, instead, and Bucky swallows hard. “Okay, that’s not playing fair.”

“Never got taught how,” Clint says. “All games are rigged.” 

“Then I guess I gotta stop playing.” Bucky lets out a breath. “It ain’t easy watching someone walk away with the chance you missed.” 

“Gonna feel like an ass if I’m reading this wrong,” Clint mumbles, then leans in to press his lips to Bucky’s. And if this is his chance it’s his one in a million, the golden ticket, all the lights glowing bright with a ding ding ding. 


	95. Chapter 95

Clint dropped down from the garage roof with a soft thump and jogged over, slowing once he reached Bucky’s side. He knocked their shoulders together, shoved his hands in his pockets like he was any sort of cool, and the giddy little smile on his face just wouldn’t quit. He looked different in the burnt-orange of the streetlights, a little older, a little alien, and Bucky could feel his stomach squirming, prayed Clint couldn’t see it on his face. 

“Where’re we going?” he asked, and Bucky just shrugged, sauntered across the road like there was no such thing as cars. Clint hopped a little, following, ‘cos he hadn’t got all the way used to his height yet and still scampered like he was the short skinny kid Bucky’d first met. 

The neighborhood was suburban enough that every house seemed to be asleep this late, this early, and Bucky led the way down empty streets to the play park where he’d first seen Clint, crying as his dad yelled at him about some fuckin’ thing. Bucky had picked him up after, struggling with the weight of him, and heaved him over to the swings, pushing him as high as his six year old arms could. 

He snagged a swing now, straddled it so he could sit facing Clint, watch the shadows of leaves dance across his night-darkened hair. 

“So this is all kinda ominous,” Clint said, swinging slowly and hanging backwards, rigid as a board, the muscles he’d been working on all last summer standing out against his too small shirt. “You’re not gonna kill me, right?” 

Bucky reached out to grab the chain of Clint’s swing, pulling them sideways and into each other, sending them curling in precarious shapes. 

“Nah,” he said. “Maybe myself if you say no.” Clint sat up and looked at him sharply and Bucky twisted his mouth into half a grin, his stomach twisting right along with it. 

“Say no to?” 

“So you know I’m going to college,” Bucky said, and Clint’s face fell into the familiar frown he’d been wearing a lot, lately. “And,” Bucky continued, determined, “I’m wondering what I need to be telling people.” 

“About what?” Clint said. He dug his sneakers into the dirt like he was gonna swing himself, Bucky’s grip on his swing chain be damned, but after a moment he sighed and wrapped his fingers over Bucky’s instead. Bucky swallowed hard. 

“Well college is all about hook-ups, right?” Bucky said, and he was watching closely enough to see Clint flinch. It was a reason to hope. “And I wondered if maybe I should be telling people I got a guy back home.” 

“Do you?” Clint asked, and then stilled as Bucky stroked a thumb across his fingers, deliberate, intent. He saw the moment Clint got it, his eyes widening in the moonlight, his lips tipping up into the shyest of his smiles. 

“I dunno, maybe,” he said. “I’m hopin’.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #100 on the comm \o/!


	96. Chapter 96

Kiss number ten was snuck in quickly on the elevator between floors, and was surprisingly hot and deep and involved for that, the doors opening on Clint startled and rumpled and panting. Bucky was leaning in the corner of the elevator, arms folded and legs crossed, a study in smug.

Clint didn’t know exactly how this had started, this string of stolen seconds and illicit kisses, but there was a risk that if he mentioned it it might stop as quick as it started, and he was not ready for this to be over. He was not ready to lose the feel of Bucky’s warm hand on his waist, sneaking under his shirt and resting there gently like a shy request while his mouth ignored what was polite and took exactly what he wanted.

If running out of fingers to count their kisses was the only relationship goal that Bucky could admit to right now, Clint’d take it and hold on with both hands.


	97. Chapter 97

“What would you do if you were here?”

Clint’s soft groan shivered into Bucky’s ear. He’d been gone for a month now, somewhere in Europe, somewhere with mountains and bad guys and spotty cell reception, and Bucky had been going slowly mad.

He wouldn’t have said relationship, before Clint had gone. There’d’ve been words like ‘convenient’, like 'buddy’, like the gentle fricative of 'fuck’ stretched out over a bitten lip. Perspective changed a little when you hadn’t slept right in a month.

“Which answer d'you want?” Clint said, and Bucky tilted his head, 'cos this wasn’t how things usually went.

“Which answers can I choose?”

“Phone sex, honest, us,” Clint rattled off like he was counting off on his fingers.

“Us isn’t honest?” There was a little more meaning in that than he’d meant.

“In a different way. That’s what you’re going for?”

“Yeah.”

Bucky could almost feel the long breath Clint let out against the skin of his neck, and the fraction of an inch between almost and could was hell.

“Well I’d kiss you first,” Clint said, and his tone said a lot about the colour of his cheeks. “Just a little, 'cos I’ve been travelling, and my face is like sandpaper, but enough to remind myself what I’ve been missing. What’s been missing from me.” And hey if those words weren’t a punch in the gut. “Then I’d wrap myself around you for a bit, probably. Shove my face in your neck and fuck the stubble rash. Squeeze you a little too tight, make you kinda uncomfortable, if I’m reading this wrong.”

“You’re not,” Bucky said. Had no idea what Clint would hear in his voice.

“Okay.” Relief. That was relief. “Then I’d haul you into the shower,” Clint continued, “make a fucking poor effort at getting you off, hands or mouth, whichever was easiest, drag you to bed and then pass out on you half way through a shitty hand job.”

“Sounds perfect,” Bucky said, no word of a lie.

“I’d make you breakfast in the morning,” Clint said, “maybe tell you I love you, I dunno, I haven’t figured that bit out yet.”

“Pretty sure I love you too,” Bucky said, and let out a shaky laugh. “Fuck, Barton, the hell was the honest answer?”

“Honestly?” Clint said, his words bending a little around a grin, “I’m outside your front door.”


	98. Chapter 98

Steve shifted uncomfortably, abs glinting gently in the harsh light.

“Does anyone else find this - kind of - ”

“Demeaning?” Sam said dryly, rubbing baby oil into his shoulders.

“Remember it’s for a good cause,” Tony called over from makeup, then winced as he was aggressively tweezed. Bruce, who had refused on principle - the principle being that he didn’t want to and everyone was too scared to make him - seemed to be finding the whole thing hilarious.

“This isn’t demeaning,” said Clint. “You don’t know demeaning until you’ve had custard pie down your pants so often you develop a UTI.”

There was a moment of silence as everyone stared at him. He shrugged.

“Or wrestled your dog for the last slice of pizza,” Bucky added, and Steve turned to him. He’d always thought Bucky’s taste was pretty suspect, but -

“Seriously?”

“Hey,” Clint protested, “it was really good pizza. Plus, I won.”

“ _This_ week,” Bucky said, and laughed. ‘Cos yeah, somehow, some way, _seriously._


	99. Chapter 99

“Ha!” Clint crowed. “Bruce! Pay up. I’m now allegedly married to _all_ the Avengers.”

“Pretty sure no one’s picked up on Vision or Wanda yet,” Sam said, pedantically, and Clint scowled. 

“Okay a) robot and 2) I’m not counting the minivengers. If I could conceivably be a parent I’m against it.” 

“Not _all_  the Avengers,” Bucky said, quietly bitter. 

“Look,” Clint said, matter of fact and sensible and coming over to press a kiss just below Bucky’s hairline, “I said contrasting, did I not say contrasting? Ain’t my fault you went with the silver fuckin’ wedding ring.” 

 

 


	100. Chapter 100

Natasha’s gentle fingers running through his hair had always been one of those home things. The home things that followed you around when you never stayed any place for long: candy corn and the smell of fresh sawdust, a taut bowstring and the faded grey beanbag that held exactly his shape. Home was expanding, though. Not to a place, he wasn’t sure he’d ever manage a place, but high-end coffee and the electric-sharp smell of the workshop was almost the same. The distant slam of Simone’s kids coming home from school. The weird comforting clean scent of the detergent Steve and Bucky used. 

Clint curled in on himself a little tighter, his head shifting in Natasha’s lap. Her hand stilled in his hair and she sighed, the kind of sigh that had him wincing preemptively ‘cos the truth never hurt so much as when it came from her mouth. 

“You’re allowed to have this,” she said. Clint fought not to cover his ears, cross his fingers, sacrifice fried chicken to the god of fucked up childhoods. Good things were temporary, this was a fact that was backed up by his entire goddamn life, and the only way you got to keep them a little longer was by pretending you couldn’t see them, pretending they didn’t exist. Slip-sliding past the universe’s attention by not letting things _matter_ , and acknowledging that they were important was the first step towards losing everything. Again. 

“Can we just not talk about it?” he asked, plaintive. 

“Isn’t that what got you into this mess?” Natasha asked, and he whined and squished his face against her thigh. She scritched her nails against his scalp and then pulled gently on a handful of his hair. “You may not suffocate yourself on me, Clint.” 

“You’re no fun,” he said, and pushed himself up to sitting, rubbing his hands over his face. “So what do I do?”

Natasha rolled her eyes. 

“You say the words you’ve said a hundred times to everyone _but_  him,” she said. 

“Not _everyone_ ,” he complained. 

“You said it to Butterfingers,” she said, unimpressed. “You said it to the _coffee machine.”_

 _“_ I know,” he said, “but -”

“But it matters,” she finished, and he felt like he was falling, sick terror like a punch to the gut. 

“But it’s _terrifying_ ,” he said, and he hated how pathetic it sounded. 

“Yes,” she said. Matter of fact. Unsympathetic. The way she always sounded when she told him the truth. 

“The people I love pretty much always go away,” he said, and the truth from his mouth hurt somehow even worse than it did from hers. 

“Not always,” she said. 

“Can I text him?” he asked, a last-ditch effort, and she cuffed him gently around the back of his head, the rough tangle of her fingers in his hair giving him the courage to head for home. 

 

*

 

Bucky had lost the habit of home in the army, and nothing in his life since had allowed him to pick it back up, nothing let him be close and safe and settled and still. He bunked in with Steve in their little Brooklyn apartment, but there was nothing of him in the shape of it; he could walk away any moment without looking back. 

He wasn’t quite comfortable with the fact that a ratty place in Bed-Stuy would be a hell of a lot harder to leave behind, if that moment came. That he’d somehow gotten used to the sound of claws on hardwood, to sputtering fitful showers and the couch that tried to take out your kidneys if you sat on it wrong. 

It wasn’t _his_  but there was something in his chest that said it could be, that said maybe the good kind of four letter word could be applied to it if he tried, only he seemed to be the only one thinking it. He was still coming in through the window left open for Lucky, welcomed but uninvited, never asked to make himself at home. 

And still the sound of Clint’s keys in the door settled something in his chest into a space made exactly for it. 

“Hey buddy,” Clint said, dropping to his knees to return Lucky’s greeting. “Hey, Bucky.” 

Bucky pushed himself to his feet, and Clint didn’t meet his eyes as he shoved Lucky away and clambered upright. He folded his arms across his chest, curled in on himself in a way that didn’t make much sense, and Bucky wondered what it was he thought he’d done. 

“So Natasha says I’m an idiot,” Clint said, apologetic, and Bucky was willing to accept the premise. It was frequently true. “She says that I fucked up when I didn’t say it back.”

Bucky blinked. 

“I do, though,” Clint said. “I’m just bad at saying it ‘cos it matters, and things that matter scare the shit outta me.” He smiled with one side of his mouth, glanced up at Bucky halfway and sidelong. “Therefore you’re the most terrifying and the best thing in my life.” 

_Oh_. So maybe it wasn’t the shape he’d thought he’d needed it, and maybe the words weren’t quite there, but the meaning was clear enough to set up home in his chest and pulled him forward like he was magnetised, like gravity, to fold Clint up into his arms. 

“Hey,” he said, into the skin of Clint’s neck, pressing the words close and safe and settled and still. “Hey, welcome home.” 

 

 


	101. Chapter 101

Gotta admit, in some ways Clint was a pretty traditional guy. He’d always liked that jolt of possessive satisfaction when a hook up trailed downstairs in his too-big clothes - never enough to start buying button-down shirts, maybe, but enough to take the loss of clothing with ease, satisfaction even. A shirt slipping off a shoulder provided the perfect place for his lips to rest, low pressure morning after query. Yes? Yes.

He was expecting that to be one of the things he had to miss, with this.

There wasn’t much he had to miss, and there was so very much more that moulded itself into the shape of perfection, a shape that was unfamiliar but he had somehow always known well enough to recognise immediately when he had it. When Bucky showed up and gave it to him. Like he’d accepted the loss of his favourite shirt - Lizzy, short dark hair, laugh like a crow and smile like a sunrise - he’d accepted that there were gonna be sacrifices and that Bucky was worth any and all of them.

So when he turned at the soft pad of feet on the floor, he hadn’t expected to be smacked in the gut with this particular flavour of feelings.

Bucky was sleepy-eyed and messy-haired, shuffling in his sweatpants. He was wearing Clint’s shirt, a little too tight and hitched up at the side, the bare skin of his hip a perfect place for Clint’s hand to rest.

Clint reeled Bucky in, close and warm, and pressed his lips to the curve of Bucky’s neck. Yes, he thought. Everything that could be and had ever been _yes._


	102. Chapter 102

Bucky can’t stop shaking. Reaction tremors vibrating through him. How the hell do you come back from something like this? 

His worst nightmare: two blond men held at gunpoint, the both of them sharing the center of his existence, and the fucking injunction to somehow _choose_. It’s surreal, it’s absurd, that somehow he’s gone from that moment to this, that the Avengers and NYPD’s finest are working around him and he can’t face up to the reality that yeah, yeah, the both of them survived and that is everything, that is the _world_  to him, but he can’t stop shaking ‘cos he’s gonna get dumped. 

‘cos how the hell do you come back from something like this? How could he come back from staring into Clint’s blue eyes, looking at the faint smile he was wearing like forgiveness, and in the last second before Tony’s repulsors took out the back wall, choosing  _Steve?_

In the moment he felt metallic, iron-hard and silver-cold. Now he feels rusted, melted, _broken._

“Hey,” a voice says, warm and worried and beloved-familiar, “hey, Buck, you okay?” Clint’s shoulder nudges up against his, coming to rest there, and Bucky grabs for his hand like a lifeline. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, “I’m so fucking sorry, Clint,” and Clint swings around to face him, bemused frown in place, cupping Bucky’s face with his hand and quirking a crooked, confused smile. 

“Sorry for what?” he says, and how bad, how stupid fucking royally has Bucky been screwing this up if Clint doesn’t even see that there was a _choice?_  


	103. Chapter 103

“I don’t -”

Bucky resolutely stared at the grass under his feet, kicking at the clump with the heel of his shoe until dusty dry earth stained the canvas of his sneakers.

“I don’t get how you’re so open about it,” he said, finally.

Clint was sprawled backward across the bleachers, one foot on the bench and one on the ground, his shirt rucked up a little and his fingers scratching idly across his belly. Bucky looked back down at the ground quickly.

“Who gives a shit?” He said, and the harsh words shouldn’t be said so casually. They should hurt more, and their very ease in Clint’s mouth kinda suggested that maybe they’d hurt too long to be anything other than familiar.

“I always thought everyone would,” Bucky said, running his finger under the strap of his prosthesis in an awkward, familiar motion.

Clint shrugged, his shirt hissing against sun-warmed metal, squinting up at the sun.

“Can’t remember the last time my dad checked into the real world,” he said, “and my brother -”

He made an oddly elegant gesture, dismissive, like his brother had been disappeared by magic. Everyone knew the Barton boy was in jail, though. It was one of the more pressing reasons why Bucky was the only other one out here. Well. Aside from the obvious.

“Don’t you bother about what people will say?”

Clint laughed, and tapped behind his ear.

“Don’t have to hear ‘em,” he said. He pushed himself upright, his muscles obvious under rolled up sleeves, and Bucky bit his lip and - for maybe the first time - didn’t make himself look away. Clint ducked a little to catch his eye and grinned.

“You know you don’t have to tell anyone?” He said. “You do you.”

“I’d rather do you,” Bucky said, and curled his mouth into a grin he’d been practicing in the mirror.

It was worth the bellowed laughter that rang across the field, worth the Hell he was gonna catch from his mom for skipping class, for the instant of shock on Clint’s face, the flushed cheeks and bitten lip and wide eyes.


	104. Chapter 104

The soldier knew every exit and somehow wished himself too tired to remember them. Stared at the stain on the wall of the apartment the same way he had stared at the stain on the wall every night, _every_  night he could remember. 

“So what do you do,” his killer asked, “when you’re kinda considering other options?”

“What,” the soldier said. Did not ask. Had been punished, extensively and creatively and unforgivingly, for asking. He didn’t _remember_ this, but visceral and instinctive reactions outlined a lot of the empty places in his life. 

“Like, I dunno, teaching.” There was a man in the doorway to his kitchen, between him and the fire escape, gun held casually, but trained. “I could maybe teach, although I don’t even have a GED so I guess archery is it.” 

“…okay,” the Soldier said, and the tone, the tone was another rebellion, another warning sign, but it only made his killer bare his teeth in a smile. 

“I figure I could mentor pretty good,” his killer said. “I have so many instructions on what not to do.”

“Is there a reason you’re telling me this?” 

“You’re kinda inspiring.” His killer grinned another of those danger-beautiful grins. “Pretty enough to make me consider abandoning my life of crime.” 

“You lead a life of crime?”

“I lead a life of crime.” He nodded his blond head. “Unfortunately it’s the legally sanctioned kind, the kind for a steady paycheck, which is weirdly harder on the soul than when you’re doing it through your own choice.” 

“But, paycheck,” the soldier said, flat and somehow humorous, and he liked his killer’s laugh. He’d been here, remembering, long enough to like the way his own laugh sounded. He didn’t, of course, remember how long it’d been. 

“Y’know what,” with a grin held steady in noon-sky eyes, “I’m gonna make a different call here. I’m gonna let you go do you.” 

The soldier didn’t take that for granted. He left everything just exactly where it was, the triple- locked front door included, and pushed past his killer to reach the window. 

“Maybe look me up,” his killer, his destroyer, his saviour said. “I’m good with strays.”


	105. Chapter 105

Clint was always touching himself.

It wasn’t inappropriate, nothing you’d really notice unless you were watching, unless you couldn’t _stop_ watching. He was always tugging on his ear, winding his fingers together, rubbing the back of his neck. He stroked the inside of his own arm when he was hurting, fisted his hands in his hair when frustrated, ran his thumb back and forth across his lips, lost in thought.

Clint touched himself like someone who didn’t get enough touches from anyone else. He was skin hungry, touch _starved_ , and it put a new and different slant on the way he curled himself around the Widow when she showed. She ran her fingers through his hair and he melted into her, eyes closed and lips tipped up.

Out of curiosity, out of nothing other than curiosity, out of nothing like curiosity, Bucky reached out one time and set his fingers against the curve where Clint’s shoulder met his neck, a simple request for attention that made Clint shiver and melt and freeze himself solid, all in a breath. And curiosity didn’t cover it, didn’t do justice to the pulling visceral _need_ to know what noise Clint would make when Bucky put his mouth there.


	106. Chapter 106

Sweat-sticky soft slick kisses. The gently fricative hiss of heat-damp shirts pulled over sun-kissed skin, freckle-speckled and warm. The hotel room’s only saving grace is the graceful iron limiter dangling free and limiting nothing, window flung open and swung wide for the barest breathless breeze to ease inside. Blond and brown and over and under, impossibly atypically unseasonably close, making the most of an empty moment, crime crushed into melting tarmac by summer’s heavy weight. The state, the city lies silent, save for uneven gasps and wide-eyed stuttering cries.


	107. Chapter 107

Clint is awake, but barely. The languid sort of consciousness where blinking lasts too long and a slow stretch reminds you of the satisfied soreness from last night. The whole of him feels so good, so soaked in pleasant sensation, that it takes a second to register.

“What’re you -” he mumbles, but Bucky’s mouth is occupied with a stinging sucking bite that shivers to Clint’s dick, the best sort of pain. “You know ’m yours, don’t have to -”

“Human body’s got about 33 vertebrae,” Bucky mumbles, moving down, “shut it, I’m halfway done.”

Clint, obliging, shuts it. ‘Cos he’s got 16 beautiful bruises down the line of his spine, and his dick is hardening against the mattress in pleasant anticipation 'cos he knows where this journey ends.


	108. Chapter 108

“Holy shit,” Clint had said, delighted. “Holy shit, can none of you -?”

There’d been scowls and grumbles at his obvious delight, and Tony had muttered something scathing, but Bucky had watched the unabashed pleasure on his face as he vaulted onto the back of the horse, rode hard after the criminals, pushed himself up on the stirrups for an unimpeded shot with his bow. It was impressive, and fucking _hot_ , and Bucky’d had a little trouble maintaining the disinterested stare.

Now they’re in the jet, Clint’s capable hands wrapped around the controls, and he’s grinning to himself in a way that’s clearly getting Tony’s goat. _Bucky_ wouldn’t call it smug, but that’s 'cos Bucky has made a study of Clint’s face from as close as he can get it.

“You’re not special, Barton,” Tony says, cutting across the tired silence, resentful and kinda mean. It’s guilt, Bucky thinks, but that doesn’t make it any better. “If I’d had the suit working we wouldn’t even have needed you.”

Clint doesn’t react. His smile doesn’t even change. His hands maybe tighten a little on the controls; it’s difficult to tell.

“Some of us don’t need a rocket suit to be awesome,” he says.

“Some of us were too busy getting multiple degrees to screw around with horses,” Tony snaps back, and Steve lifts his head up.

“Hey, enough, you two.”

Clint gives Tony the finger and a grin that’s lost something, although he patches it up well. You’d almost never know.

Bucky follows him off the jet when they land. Clint’s done crowing, stowing his gear with efficient movements, the little smile he’d been wearing lost somewhere along the way, and hey, turns out Bucky’d do pretty much anything to get it back.

Clint heads for his room and Bucky catches the door before it closes, shouldering his way inside.

“You shouldn’t believe him.” Clint’s shoulders tense up and then relax again in an instant, and his smile is easy.

“No idea what you’re talking about.”

Bucky walks forward and is stupidly, ridiculously grateful that Clint has always stood his ground.

“Everything about you is special, Clint Barton,” he says.

“Ha,” Clint bites out, “yeah, I’m a goddamn superhero, didn’t you hear?” His voice is easy again by the end, well trained.

“Word’s used too easy around here,” Bucky tells him, “but yeah, more than maybe anyone, you are.”

“You tryin’ to get in my pants, Barnes?” Clint asks, “‘cos I gotta tell you it doesn’t need half this effort.”

Bucky lifts his hand, a little stymied by the lack of long hair to tuck behind Clint’s ear. He cups the side of his face instead, looks straight into his eyes.

“You’re worth every second of effort and more,” he says, and even if there’s a lingering disbelief in his eyes as Bucky ducks in for a kiss, when they finally pull apart he’s smiling.


	109. Chapter 109

Clint learning to cook has been a gradual process. Self defence more than anything, ‘cos Bucky’s pretty much lost at anything past boiled. He’d just about mastered the stove top before he started all this, managed a cooked breakfast with something like skill, but that’s the disadvantage of a relationship rather than a one night good time - they expect a little more than French toast and bacon.

Relationships are a lot about time, turns out. They’re about not getting to craft yourself into something acceptable for the time they’re with you, 'cos you don’t get that time for the moulding, can’t pretend you’re anything other than yourself. Clint doesn’t so much have practice at thinking that’s enough.

So he pushes himself forward, learns to sauté and steam and season, and it’s absent the usual scared desperation of self improvement and turns somehow into fun. See, Bucky’d go for boiled if that’s what’s on offer, so it’s less about improving to impress him, and more about wanting to see him smile.


	110. Chapter 110

“Little princess is all tucked up,” Bucky hears as soon as he opens the door, drained and disappointed and smelling of perfume. “No toys broken, no bones either, only one of us ate soap and sadly it wasn’t short stuff.”

He snorts out a laugh, kicking his fancy shoes off to lie beside Clint’s purple sneakers. He should keep 'em on, should offer to drive him home, but they both know he’s gonna end up crashing on the sofa anyhow.

“Why’m I sensing a ‘but’?”

“Cos mine’s just that good,” Clint says. “It has an aura.”

Bucky walks into the living room, pulling off his tie, but his hand freezes when he sees Clint’s face.

“What the fuck happened?”

See, people (Steve) had said he was crazy to be hiring on Tasha’s weird veteran roommate as a babysitter. People (mostly Steve) said they weren’t sure he could be trusted, said - painfully honest - that maybe, with what he’d been through, with what he’d seen -

People, in Bucky’s opinion, were hypocrites who should shut their damned mouths.

So he doesn’t worry for a second when he sees the red skin around Clint’s eye that promises bruises, the crusted blood above his eyebrow. Bucky’s little bit had loved him as soon as she set eyes on him and Clint had handed over his heart in return; Bucky is sure as hell that Clint would rather die than let anything happen to her.

“There was an Incident,” Clint says.

“Before or after you ate some soap?”

Clint looks thoughtful. “Kinda concurrent. The soap was for the pop-up pirate.”

“What,” Bucky says, and Clint looks sheepish.

“Don’t knock it, the thing got _air_.”

“You’re a fuckin’ idiot,” Bucky mutters. He walks over to Clint, brushes his fingers gently over the skin around his eye, looking at it like a concerned parent for all of the second it takes for Clint’s pupil to widen further in the dim lamp light. For the second it takes to register their closeness, to remember that his little bit’s not the only one to lose their fuckin’ heart to this asshole. Bucky swallows, hard, and Clint licks his lips.

“Gonna kiss it better?” He says.


	111. Chapter 111

Clint can’t find Bucky and the world has exploded, large fragments of ash floating down around him like ticker tape in the world’s worst parade. There are people screaming and shouting and crying and Clint can’t find Bucky. He thinks maybe he hit his head? Maybe. Blinking seems kinda gummier and he smells copper when he breathes.

Clint can’t find Bucky and a woman with a headscarf helps him pull at a door until it twisted-screeches open, until people can pour out and one or two of them try to thank him but they are not Bucky so he can’t really see them right now. Something is missing in his chest. Something may be missing in his head, too, maybe it’s all the blood, but his chest is the place he can feel it. He understands why people say hollow but it’s more like it’s filled like a balloon is filled, pressure and aching and ready to pop if he breathes.

Clint can’t find Bucky and his radio is broken or his ears are, can’t hear much of anything any more past ringing. He relies on the movements of others to know where to dig, where to brace himself and pull, where to tear at the rubble and his hands. A man is pulled from under, bleeding and dust-choked and crying, and Clint watches him hauled in close and hugged and kissed and feels nothing and everything all at once. Like a wave, like a saltwater wave, heavy and weightless, floating and falling, soundless and an all-encompassing sound that drowns out everything but that which is most important.

“Clint.”

He is on his feet, he thinks, but the world seems unsteady all of a sudden. He falls forward, is pulled forward, knocks his forehead against a metal shoulder and breathes, and breathes.


	112. Chapter 112

“I need you,” Clint says, and Bucky’s crossing the city just like that. Like the rain is nothing, like the lightning that flickers across the sky offers nothing more than mood lighting.

All the lights are out in Clint’s building, and everything’s lit with jack o'lanterns and black candles, glow sticks and LED candle-shaped flickerings. It’s June and that’s what they’ve got to hand, a moment’s ridiculous reality that Clint’d never believe, that he’s a good landlord and he makes people’s lives better.

Speaking of, he’s using his phone as a torch when Bucky arrives, held in the baseball-calloused hand of Simone’s oldest. He’s stretched out under the sink, his shirt pulling up in the middle, and Bucky takes a moment to stare at the bright white light that’s reflected from his belly before making his presence known.

“You needed me?” He says, and there’s a moment’s awkward silence while Clint looks at Simone’s kid, and Simone’s kid looks at Clint. Simone's kid sighs, shoves the phone on the kitchen counter and leaves the room. 

“Yeah,” he says, “need is kind of a strong word. Sorry.”

“Hey,” Bucky tells him, “you need me, I come,” ‘cos that’s the closest he can get in front of other people to anything like a declaration.

“Well,” Clint says, leaning back and smirking, “not _yet._ ”

"I can  _still hear you_ ," an appalled voice yells from the other room. 


	113. Chapter 113

Clint isn’t that Good Will Hunting guy, he’s not gonna go solve complex maths shit in his spare time, but he can flip a bottle cap off three different surfaces and into a bin (or Tony Stark’s face) given less than a second to focus. And sometimes he finds it peaceful to find out about the universe, or bugs, or places he’s never been. So yeah, the war documentaries stored on the TV are his, sure. He’s not ashamed of it. Not when Tony and Thor have a scheduled Project Runway marathon, and Natasha tears up over Dog the Bounty Hunter.

It is a little humiliating, though, that Bruce notices it first. Before Clint even, consciously. It’s good that it’s Bruce, at least, ‘cos Bruce makes digs at low volume, unexpectedly hilarious directly into your ear and no one else has any idea why you’re fallen off the couch and rolling. Or, y'know hypothetically, frozen solid and staring at the screen like it’s gonna bite you, 'cos you’ve somehow bookmarked all the Bucky specials without noticing.

“Sorry,” Bruce says and backs off it, genuinely contrite, but it’s kinda too late and the damage is done. Clint can talk to FRIDAY, get the shows removed (or set to private, maybe), but what’s said can’t be unsaid and what’s seen can’t be unseen.

It’s easy, at least, to partition off the Buckys. To separate the imaginary guy on screen, with his short hair, beaming smile, kickass jacket, from the very real and hairy and angry dude who showers too often and steals Clint’s beer.

(How can a guy shower too often? Turns out even the Tower’s hot water ain’t unlimited. Also polite people, good housemates, communal livers, they take their damned clothes into the bathroom with them, don’t wander the corridors in towels too small for anyone’s sanity.)

So he’s coping. Seriously, he’s doing just fine. The guy who glares at him over coffee and the guy he jerks off to in the shower aren’t even that similar, not unless you look closely, and Clint has way too much self-preservation for that.

But some things you don’t have to look closely to see, and when Steve persuades Bucky to get a haircut Clint walks right into a wall.


	114. Chapter 114

Lucky has this terrible habit of sticking his nose in people’s crotches. He’s not an _animal_ \- well technically he - he always knows to wait for permission to approach, is the point, but once he _has_ that permission he ain’t exactly shy about it.

And usually Clint feels kinda pink about it, face palming quietly on the other end of the leash, apologising just as soon as they’re done giggling and petting his dumb-ass, cute as hell dog. And then -

Well, then there’s the occasional guy.

Long dark hair, built as a wall, eyes like concentrated sky. He’s got a steel jaw that melts enough to bend into a smile when Lucky radiates love at him, begging with every hair on his body to be petted. The guy bends down and Lucky knocks him on his ass, shoving his nose where it ain’t wanted, and the guy cracks, cracks up, gently nudging Lucky away with his beautiful prosthetic arm as he laughs.

“Sorry,” he says, “I am so sorry, him and me, we’ve got poor impulse control. Like owner like dog, y'know?”

The guy leans back on his elbows and eyes Clint up and down and Clint thinks - but doesn’t say, please universe confirm he did not say out loud - I mean, can you blame him?


	115. Chapter 115

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continued from 114.

Fuck physio, Bucky’s got no time for it. He’ll stretch, he’ll lift some, but he’s got no interest in anything past running, stretching out his legs and seeking freedom in the rhythmic pounding of his feet, in the endless effortless choices that come with being out of Steve’s orbit for all of an hour.

No insult to the guy, he’s the best friend anyone could have, and Bucky’s not sure he’d have made it out without him, but every now and then it gets a little much. Every now and then he makes a break for it, heads for the streets, and hopes a little for an accidental encounter.

He’d say that he wasn’t looking for anyone in particular, but he never made much of a habit of lying. He’s not touch starved enough to long for a nose in the crotch, but it’s worth putting up with one for the blue eyes of the guy. For the strong calloused hand running through straw blond hair, the sheepish hunch of his shoulders.

Give him a minute, a month, a year, and maybe he’ll work up the courage to talk to the guy. Maybe he’ll forget about the scars and the metal that marks where he’s not whole. He’s still waiting to know the sound of his voice.


	116. Chapter 116

Clint pinned Bucky down on the couch. He initially went for the wrists, pinned above Bucky’s shoulders, but Bucky thwarted him, twining their fingers together and participating happily in his own capture. Bucky’s muscular sides against the inside of his thighs was a distraction, Clint wasn’t gonna lie.

“I swear to god, Bucky goddamn Barnes - ”

Bucky bit down on his own lower lip. Clint lost his train of thought. He slumped back, sitting on Bucky’s belly now, and Bucky lost his air on a snort of laughter.

Clint rocked forward again, weight on the both of their hands, making intense eye contact that Bucky tried not to smile into, forcing his face into a frown to match Clint’s.

“David Attenborough is quiet time,” Clint said, low and intent, weaving his head to avoid Bucky as he lifted his, as he focused all of his attention on Clint’s mouth. “ _Quiet_ time, Buck.”

“Sorry,” Bucky said, half-hearted, craning his neck to breathe it against Clint’s mouth. Clint arched back - not incidentally grinding against Bucky’s belly a little, pushing his hands a little deeper into the cushions of the couch. Bucky’s eyes narrowed, darkened, but it wasn’t enough yet to bring the arm into play. They both knew how easily the fight would be won. That was never the point.

“Bullshit you are,” Clint said.

Bucky grinned, mischievous and gorgeous with his hair all spread out on the couch like that, with his willing surrender under Clint’s hands. He leaned down to kiss him with a sense of inevitability - he’d never had a goddamn chance.

 

 


	117. Chapter 117

“This is not my fault,” Clint says. That’s his meatspace name, Clint, like _that’s_  not someone’s grandpa. Clints wear sock suspenders and grouch about their arthritis, okay, they don’t have shoulders like _that_. Fuck you, Clint. 

“Fuck you, Clint,” Bucky says. 

“Aaw, c’mon!” Clint looks genuinely distressed now, and whatever part of Bucky was enjoying this is starting to feel a little bit bad. He’s got eyes like Steve’s, eyes _prettier_  than Steve’s, and it’s not like Bucky’s ever managed to resist. “I swear to god I didn’t know, okay, and it was _killing_  me that I was falling a little bit in love over the internet with a fuckin’ _dinosaur_ -”

Bucky doesn’t stop walking, but once he’s through the doorway he spins and pushes Clint up against the wall next to it. Clint cringes, ‘cos as has been established he’s a fuckin’ idiot. 

“- and you actually used the _actual words ‘_ kids these days’ okay no one actually says that who isn’t back in diapers, and -”

Bucky - who’s been watching this with interest and growing amusement as Clint gets more and more indignant - cuts him off with the sort of kiss that romance movies accrete around. There’s adrenaline and tongues and breathlessness and heat, all the good things he’d been hoping for here. When he pulls away Clint’s blinking and dazed, corners of his mouth tilting up like helium. 

“I don’t wanna date your neighbour Ethel,” Bucky says. 

“Good, ‘cos I woulda had to fight her for it.” Clint’s grin is infectious. “And I’m not sure I could take someone with a bionic goddamn hip.” 


	118. Chapter 118

It wasn’t a hard mission so much as it was _long_. Tony’s playing cards with Steve in the back of the ‘jet, and Tasha’s spread out across the seats, either asleep or making a good show of it. Bruce they’d left behind with Sam for company, taking things apart and analysing other things and making angry noises at whatever it was he was finding. And Bucky’s been staring at the side of Clint’s head for the past ten minutes. He’s not _saying_  anything, but he’s getting increasingly difficult to ignore. 

“You ever had sex in one of these things?” he eventually says, and Clint chokes on air. 

“ _Excuse me?”_

 _“_ Tell me the thought hasn’t crossed your mind,” Bucky continues. He’s so casual about it, that’s the thing that’s killing Clint right now. Like he’s discussing the mission, or whether that cloud looks as much like a unicorn as Clint thinks it does. 

“Usually I’m flying the damned thing so no, not so much.” 

“Road head,” Bucky says, musing, and thank fuck the controls on this thing aren’t too sensitive or Clint’d have them all upside down with his convulsive grip. 

“Please stop,” Clint says, and Bucky flashes him a wicked grin. 

“Nah,” he says, “that ain’t your line.” 

“You crossed the line a ways back,” Clint informs him. “It’s back there, by Tony. Maybe you could go find it.”

“But the view’s so much nicer over this way.” 

“Seriously, what did I do to deserve this?” Clint moans. 

“Arm may be bionic, but I’ve only got so many fingers,” Bucky answers. “Where d’you want me to start?” 

Clint just kinda gapes at him for a second. Bucky rolls his eyes and starts ticking off fingers. 

“Working out shirtless,” he says. “That pair of sweatpants with the hole in the inner thigh. Half-asleep coffee moaning. Tight motherfuckin’ shirts. The whole -” he waves a hand, covering all that is Clint - “badass archer thing. I could seriously go on.” 

“What,” Clint says. He has to check the controls to make sure it’s just his belly that’s flipped sideways, not the whole plane. “What?”

“So… you ever thought about having sex in one of these things?” Bucky asks, leaning back in his seat and maybe arching a little, maybe fucking with Clint’s heads. 

“It’s starting to cross my mind,” Clint says. 


	119. Chapter 119

Out there somewhere there’s a bullet with your name on it, but someone printed Clint Barton’s like business cards.

One time they considered putting up a sign - it has been x days since Barton’s been shot - and Tony even jokingly asked the guy patching the drywall for a quote. Turned out he was a Hydra plant, anyway. Clint got shot.

Mostly they’re not - he’s a skilled agent, mostly it’s just creases and grazes and things that won’t scar. Tasha gave him a poorly doctored shirt that now says HAN SHOT CLINT and the writing’s a little sloppy and Clint can’t wear it in public any more.

It’s commonplace, is the thing. So when he responds sheepishly to the status check that sorry, guys, he’s got another hole in him, he doesn’t expect a Winter Soldier bursting onto his rooftop, wide-eyed and a little desperate.

“Are you - ” Bucky says, handsy and a little desperate, “fuck, are you - ?”

“Fine,” Clint says, bemused. He’s bleeding, sure, hasn’t had a second to get a field dressing over the furrow in his side, but he’s experienced enough to know what’s a problem and what’ll just get you laughter and free drinks.

Bucky pulls his shirt out the way, runs shaking fingers gently over the torn skin that’s just kinda oozing by this point.

“Shit,” Bucky says after a second. “You really need to stop - ”

“Yeah, I know, Tony’s medical insurance premiums have gotta be a bitch,” Clint says, idly takes out a Doombot with Bucky’s fingers still against his side. Bucky presses down, just a little, just enough to make Clint grunt and turn his way, lips parted ready to protest.

Bucky’s face gets in the way.

Bucky’s face gets all in close to his face, in fact. Close enough for touching, close enough Clint is breathing in Bucky’s breath, close enough that Bucky’s tongue touches Clint’s bottom lip when he licks his.

“You’ve gotta _stop_ ,” Bucky says, serious, and doesn’t tilt in closer until Clint fumbles out a promise.


	120. Chapter 120

“Wow,” Tony says, although it’s a little hard to tell it’s him with the size of the bouquet he’s carrying. “Whoever’s wooing Barton is making me look bad.” 

“Worked out they’re for Clint, finally?” Steve asks, flipping to a new page in his sketchbook to try and capture the majesty of the flowers when topped with Tony’s bedhead. 

Four of the bouquets had wound up on Pepper’s desk and all Clint had seen of them had been the cards, each of which had made him grin and hide his blushes in mugs of coffee. 

“Well the purple’s kind of a clue,” Tony says, depositing the flowers on the coffee table finally. It’s definitely the most purple bouquet they could’ve had, lilacs and irises and a bunch of other flowers that Steve’s too Brooklyn to name. The card’s got a heart on that’s pierced with an arrow, too, just in case the purple’s too subtle. 

“Clint could do with a little wooing,” Steve says, “he’s an attractive man.” He’s watched Bucky pining for long enough; it’s about time he made a move, and Steve wasn’t exactly subtle in telling him that. 

“I dunno, though,” Tony says thoughtfully, "I’d’ve gone with arrows, maybe. Bouquets of bows. Flowers aren’t exactly what I think of when I think of Barton.”

Steve shrugs, seeming unconcerned. 

“Maybe the guy wooing Clint is an old-fashioned sorta gent,” he says, and carefully keeps his face as straight as possible when Tony’s eyes widen, when he gapes and points at the side of Steve’s head. 

He’ll tell him it’s Bucky later. Maybe. 


	121. Chapter 121

Clint followed Bucky through the door into the barracks, still talking, although he lowered his voice when he saw the sleeping forms in the cots. 

“I showed you my phone,” he said, frustrated, “what the hell more do you want?”

“You showed me a box with pictures,” Bucky said, slanting him a sidelong glance and a smirk that was doing a hell of a lot more for Clint than he’d like. “We see stranger things comin’ out of research every day, future boy.”

This Bucky was smug, and sexy, and kind of a fuckin’ asshole, so at least some things never change. Unlike future Bucky, though, unlike _Clint’s_ Bucky, this one lacked the layers of darkness in his eyes and Clint would do anything to keep him that way. To have Bucky not have to face what was coming for him. 

“What the fuck can I do to prove to you I’m from the future? That I’m your _friend_?”

Bucky tilted his head, considering. His hair was oiled, shining in the bare light that fell in through the door, and he looked like a beautiful, innocent goddamn kid, and Clint’s heart was kinda breaking. 

“I dunno. Tell me something about me no one else knows.”

Clint took a deep breath; he went with expediency rather than anything profound, indulged himself and wished he felt guiltier about it. Bucky’s cheek was smooth against his palm, and his mouth was curling into a little smile in the dimness of the room as Clint leaned in. It was as chaste a kiss as Clint could make it, silent and breathless and short. When he pulled away Bucky was smiling wider, his eyes black in the dark of the room. 

“Yeah, you’re not even the only guy in this room, pal,” he said, soft and amused. “Try again.”


	122. Chapter 122

“I’m not jealous.” 

Clint smirks, pulling the string back without looking at the target, letting the arrow fly with the certainty that it’s gonna hit center. 

“You can admit it,” he says. “I’m not gonna judge you. You’re a _little_  jealous.” 

Bucky folds his arms over his chest, scowling. His hair’s tucked behind one ear but a hank of it has fallen forward, brushing his jaw. There are _reasons_  Clint’s not looking at the target, okay, and most of them aren’t even that he’s a smug dick. 

( _Most_  of them.)

“Look,” Clint says, breezily, “I get that you’re used to being the best. World’s greatest sniper, absolutely, I’m willing to share that title.”

“ _Share_ ,” Bucky says, snorting. 

“But you can’t beat me with a bow, and that’s something you’re gonna have to accept.”

“For the last fuckin’ time,” Bucky says, watching Clint draw his longbow - the longbow he could only draw with his metal arm, and even then he couldn’t do much to aim it - with heat in his eyes. “This ain’t my jealous face.” 

“Sure,” Clint says. “Whatever you -”

“This is my _horny_  face,” Bucky finishes, and laughs like an asshole when Clint misses the damn target. 


	123. Chapter 123

_“I shouldn’t be in love with you.”_

Bucky snorts and Clint scowls at the side of his head. _No one_  gets to make fun of Clint’s telenovelas. He may not be exactly clear on what’s going on - there’s a possibility that this guy is his own evil twin, lost at sea twelve years ago and… maybe a pirate? - but the overblown dramatics speak to his _soul_. 

“The fuck does that mean, ‘shouldn’t?’” Bucky says, and Clint doesn’t have to kill him ‘cos he waited for the advert break. 

“…is this a generational thing?” Clint asks, confused, and Bucky flails frustratedly in the direction of the TV. 

“You love someone or you don’t love them, and when you do you just - deal with it. Right? Put up or shut up.”  

“You’re a romantic in your goddamn soul, Barnes,” Clint says, and he wishes that he was anywhere but here, right now. That they were having anything but this conversation. “You don’t think she deserves to know the truth?” 

“Maybe she deserves to hear it, but he doesn’t deserve to tell her,” Bucky said, folding his arms across his chest, looking so fucking indignant at the fictional dealings of Rosa and Guillermo that Clint has to look away. “What kind of asshole,” he continues, “introduces doubt like that into someone else’s relationship? It’s as bad as that fuckin’ guy.” 

“That guy?” 

Bucky makes an emphatic gesture. “With the signs, that guy.” 

Right, Clint thinks. _Love Actually_. He’s always kinda liked it. 

“So he should just keep his mouth shut?” 

“He should find someone else, none of this ‘shouldn’t love you bullshit’. Give up on her.” 

“Yeah,” Clint says, mouth dry. “Not that easy.” 

Bucky grins, abruptly distracted, slanting Clint the kind of sidelong look that sticks his tongue to the roof of his mouth. He’s all blue eyes and long dark hair, lookin’ like a romance cover, breaking people’s hearts. 

“Why, you sweet on someone, Barton?” 

Clint looks at him, at the mischief on his face, at the line of his jaw, at the crook of his shoulder where Steve seems to like burying his face. 

“Yeah,” he says, tries real fuckin’ hard for a grin. “But I shouldn’t be.” 


	124. Chapter 124

“Just admit I’m right.” 

“I’m afraid I cannot do that, sir.” 

Tony flailed, a beautiful ballet of frustration and betrayal that ended with him sprawled backwards in a chair, one hand flung across his forehead ‘cos why the fuck not? 

“I _created_  you, you ungrateful -”

“You created me to act in part as moral compass, sir,” FRIDAY said, prim disapproval in every carefully modulated tone. “Based on a number of philosophical treatises, a comprehensive understanding of modern psychology and all three seasons of Brooklyn 99.” 

“And?”

“And,” she said, “I am not going to tell you whether or not Captain Steve Rogers and Sergeant James Barnes are -”

“Boning. Come on, you can say it, just once, just for me -”

“Engaging in congress.” 

Tony swore and threw a wrench, which clattered off a workbench and almost hit Clint, who was carrying his quiver and looking amused. 

“I interrupt something?” 

“The inevitable robot uprising,” Tony said bitterly, and Clint’s grin widened. 

“What, _again?”_

 _“_ Too soon,” FRIDAY told him. 

“They’re not, if it helps,” Clint said, laying his quiver carefully on the workbench. 

“What, revolting?”

“Boning,” Clint said, evidently relishing the word. Tony snorted. 

“Right, Clint, you’re the center of gossip for the tower.”

Clint shrugged. “Maybe not, but I’ve been fucking one of ‘em on the regular for a couple months now, and he doesn’t cheat.” 

Both Tony’s feet slammed to the floor as he tried desperately not to fall off his chair. 

“You’ve - what - ?” 

“The exploding arrows are sticking  a little on the release,” Clint said, casual as you please. “Thought you could take a look.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and turned for the door, whistling between his teeth. 

“Wait,” Tony said, “fuck, Clint, don’t leave me hanging! Which one?” 

“Uh, third clockwise from the boomerang,” Clint said, asshole grin spread across his face, and ducked out the door.

“FRIDAY?”

“Ah now, sir, that would be telling,” she said, and Tony looked around for another damn wrench. 


	125. Chapter 125

“His ego is so visible; I can almost watch it grow.” 

“He’s not so bad,” Steve said mildly, shading in the sketch he’d drawn of Romanov, the way the sunlight fell on her hair. “You’ve gotta admit, he’s pretty good.” 

Bucky glared at the back of his best friend’s head and hunched lower in his seat on the bleachers. The fact that he kicked the back of Steve’s chair, sending a dark black mark across Romanov’s ear, was purely coincidental. 

He hated guys like Clint Barton, always had. The guy always scraped by in his classes, skated through life without handing in a single piece of homework, and everyone still loved him because he was some kinda goddamn archery prodigy. For someone who worked his ass off for his grades, Barton’s attitude was infuriating. And the fact that he looked like he spent all of his off hours in the gym instead of plugging away at his books, the fact he _flaunted_  it in those tiny goddamn shirts - 

“He reminds me a little of you, actually.” The ‘before the accident’ went unsaid, just like everything about that day tended to go unsaid. 

“I was never that much of an entitled asshole,” Bucky protests, and Steve gives him a look. 

“Have you ever even spoken to him?”

Bucky just scowls. 

They pass Barton on their way back to class, because that’s just the kind of life Bucky has. He glowers at the guy but Steve greets him with one of those beaming smiles that is almost too big for him. 

“Hey Clint, nice shooting!”

Instead of puffing up like Bucky half expects, Clint kinda hunches in on himself a little, rubbing a hand awkwardly against the back of his neck. 

“Oh, it wasn’t - I mean, anyone could -” 

Romanov elbows him unsubtly, and he clears his throat. 

“I mean, uh, thanks.” And then he looks up - almost shyly - and sends Bucky a tiny grin. 

“Hey Bucky,” he says, blue eyes like midsummer, and what, what the hell is happening here, Bucky thinks, trying to smother the goddamn butterflies in his gut. 


	126. Chapter 126

“You’re so cute when you pout like that.” 

Clint doesn’t even hesitate, just vaults over the back of the couch and lies on his face there, cupping his hands across the back of his neck. 

“Excuse me?” It’s Tasha’s flat voice, her mad as hell voice, and Clint bites down on a whimper. 

“Don’t get me wrong, I gotta lot of respect for you, doll, but you’re kinda undermining the whole assassin thing.” 

 _Doll_ , Clint mouths incredulously. He considers commando crawling for the door. 

“I could kill you in seventeen different ways without getting out of this chair,” Tasha says pleasantly, “and the only reason I haven’t castrated you yet is because I have a feeling my friend has a use for your anatomy.” 

Yeah, _this_  whimper doesn’t get bitten down. 

Bucky laughs, that loud no-holds-barred laugh that kills Clint a little, every time he hears it. 

“You, I like,” he says, sounding kinda admiring. 

“You’re an ass,” Tasha returns thoughtfully, “but sadly that does not always preclude my friendship.” 

She pushes to her feet and walks to the kitchen. Clint doesn’t watch her go but he’s had enough practice to track her lack of sound. There’s a creak in the couch by Clint’s head. 

“Use for my anatomy, huh?” Bucky says thoughtfully. 

“If you could keep your voice down?” Clint mumbles into the carpet. “I’m praying for death, over here.” 

“Shame,” Bucky says. “Pretty sure my anatomy has a use for you, too.” 


	127. Chapter 127

“Hold me back!”

Clint looks around, confused. “Did you - did you forget your guy’s not here?” 

It’s too late. Tiny Steve has uttered some kinda insane war cry and is halfway across the street, intent on causing _some_  kinda havoc. Clint squints at where he’s headed, sees the guy drawing back his foot and the dog cowering at his feet, and he breaks into a run too. 

He beats Steve over there, ‘cos the little guy is wheezing through insults in the middle of the street. 

“Pick on someone your own size,” he growls. 

“Can’t tell me what to do with my own dog, bro,” the guy says, and Clint shoves him in the shoulder hard enough that the kick he’s aimed misses, that he rocks back hard enough almost to lose his balance. 

“Well how about it’s my dog now, huh? Since you can’t look after the fuckin’ thing.” 

“Yeah,” Steve pants. “What he - said.” 

“This is your backup, bro?” the guy asks, smirking all over his asshole face. Clint folds his arms across his chest. 

“I look like I need backup?”

“Hey,” Steve says, sounding like he got his breath back. Clint turns his head to tell him that y’know, it’s a nice thought, but he’s really not helping, so he doesn’t see the guy’s fist coming. 

Hurts like hell but it’s not enough to knock him down; the dog snarls and lunges, tearing at the guy’s hand and making him drop the fuckin’ huge knife he’s pulled. 

“Fuck,” Steve yelps, and Clint swings for the guy, catching him across the jaw hard enough to knock him back on his ass. Steve’s taken possession of the knife and has his hand twisted into the dog’s collar, but he’s being dragged forward, lurching step after step towards the guy, and the dog's snarling viciously enough that the guy cuts his losses and runs. 

“Aaw, dog,” Clint says hopelessly. “The hell am I supposed to do with you?” 

When Bucky - Steve’s guy - shows back up they’re sitting as a sad fuckin’ trio on the curb. Steve’s still wheezing a little with every breath, Clint’s pinching the bridge of his nose in the hopes the bleeding will eventually stop, and the dog’s got his head in Clint’s lap, staring up adoringly. 

“What the hell, Steve,” Bucky says, sounding fond, and exasperated, and resigned. Clint focuses his attention on scratching real good behind the dog’s ears, ‘cos he’s had a thing for Bucky Barnes since he knew what things were (and what they were for). 

“We won?” Steve says, defiant, and Bucky huffs out a laugh. 

“You mean you got the shit beaten outta Barton,” he says, and Clint’s heart gives a treacherous thump ‘cos he hadn’t been sure the guy knew his name. 

“And adopted me this dumb dog,” Clint says, looks up slow to catch just the edges of Bucky’s smile. 

Bucky winces when he sees his face. 

“You okay, Clint?” he says. Clint’s heart turns into a damned percussion section. 

“Yeah,” he says, a little breathless, and Steve grins and leans across. Under cover of scratching Lucky’s head, he hisses, “don’t worry, he’s not my guy.” 


	128. Chapter 128

“I don’t care what they said, it doesn’t mean shit!” 

“Yeah,” Barton says, his hair fisted into the hair at the nape of his neck - it’s been a while since he’s had it cut. “Yeah, Barney, so you always say.” 

“You think they woulda stood by you with what we’ve been through? You think they’ll still be on your side when it comes out, the things you’ve done?” 

“Pretty sure it’s all come out already,” Clint says. “SHIELD files were pretty comprehensive. Google me, maybe.” 

It’s not that Bucky’s deliberately eavesdropping, it’s just that people frequently forget that there’s a certain amount of sense enhancement that comes with the supersoldier thing. Okay, so maybe he’s not moving _away_ , but - 

“Speaking of coming out,” Barney says, “they know about _that_  little charming facet?” 

Clint lets out a breath, and it sounds more resigned than pissed, but that’s okay. Bucky’s plenty pissed on his behalf. 

“You know practically no one gives a damn but you, Barn?” Clint tugs on his hair - which gives Bucky some unexpected, but not _unwelcome,_ ideas - and lets his hand drop to his side. 

“That’s what they let you think,” Barney says dismissively, and Bucky starts moving, unwilling to put up with the look on Clint’s face. 

“Hey babe,” he says, and presses a lingering kiss to Clint’s rapidly reddening cheek. “You done here?” He sends a grin Barney’s way - or at least an expression with a decent helping of teeth. 

“Sure,” Clint says. “Barney, I’ll - I’ll call you.” 

“Don’t bother,” Barney says, and heads off, presumably to crawl down a sewer or something. 

There’s an awkward silence for a second or two. Bucky kinda realises he’s not sure how to break it - that he’s maybe not paid enough attention to Barton in his efforts to get to know the team. He’s not always forthcoming - he’s been easy to overlook. 

“You know - you know he’s talking out of his ass, right?” he says, and Clint gives him a lopsided smile. 

“Yeah,” he says. “That’s what they all say.” 


	129. Chapter 129

Bucky pulled away from Clint’s mouth, from the temptation of just staying like that forever. 

“I’m not good enough for you.” 

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were trying to seduce me.”

Bucky looked sidelong at Clint, who was smirking back at him, leaning back a little and braced on his arms, hands hooked over the edge of the fountain and a fine mist sparkling on his kind of obscene arms. He looked a little windswept, a little flushed, a little like he was having the time of his goddamn life. 

“This is kind of the opposite of that,” Bucky said, and Clint snorted. 

“If you’re trying to get out of this whole dating thing you’re gonna have to try harder,” Clint said. “Like, I dunno. Death? Amnesia? You’re good at those, right?”

“You are _such an asshole,”_ Bucky said, the admiration coming through clearly. 

“Please see my disdain for your opening argument,” Clint answered. 

Losing his smile abruptly, Bucky looked out over the park, watching all the happy, healthy, regular-level assholes. 

“I get that you think you know what I’ve - I get that you think you _understand_ , but -”

“Hey,” Clint said, and Bucky was expecting sympathetic, was kinda hoping for pissed off, hadn’t bargained for _defensive_. “At least you know you didn’t choose it,” he said. 

“What?”

“Get Steve to teach you about Google,” he said. “Look me up, then get back to me about who’s good enough for who.” 

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were trying to seduce me,” Bucky said. 

“Trying?” Clint said, mock-offended, undermining it with his grin. “This is my best material!”

“I want you to know I’m judging you for that.”

Clint grinned wider, slid his hand across to tangle his fingers firmly and inescapably with Bucky’s, thumb moving gently across the back of his hand in a way that was kinda giving him goosebumps. 

“That’s okay,” Clint said, “you’re not good enough for me anyway.” 


	130. Chapter 130

“These stars are nothing compared to the ones I’ve seen in your eyes.” 

“Noooooo,” Clint said. He was slurring more now, his eyes glinting in the semi-darkness, but he could still bounce the cap of his beer off three kitchen surfaces before it landed square in the trash. “Please tell me no one actually tried that on you.” 

“On me?” Bucky sounded offended. “Nah, that was all mine, pal. Got me laid for the first time, too.” 

“Holy shit,” Clint said, “things were different in the ‘20s, I guess. That would not get you even into the vicinity of my pants.” 

“No?” Bucky said, voice calculatedly casual. “So what was the magical line that unlocked your virginity, then?” 

“Well if I recall accurately,” Clint drawled through a mischievous grin, “he said ‘wanna fuck?’”

“Poetic,” Bucky commented, and Clint snorted his ungainly way into a laugh. 

“Yup,” he said, cracking open another beer. “That’s me. Poetical motherfucker in my _soul_.” 

“Maybe you need a little romancing,” Bucky said, only halfway joking. “Maybe you deserve to have your eyes compared to the endless ocean.” 

“And my hair to endless fields of Iowa corn,” Clint said. 

“Clint?” Bucky turned to face him, hitching his knee up on the couch, and Clint mirrored him, a smile still teasing the corner of his mouth. 

“Yeah?” he said, and Bucky felt a little dizzy with the prolonged eye contact. He put every inch of what he felt in his voice, every ounce of sincerity he had ever  meant. 

“These stars are nothing compared to the ones I’ve seen in your eyes.” 

Bucky was expecting snorted laughter again. Instead he got Clint’s wet tongue slicking over his lower lip, the increasing darkness that widening pupils lent to his eyes. 

“Hey Bucky,” Clint said, low, and Bucky hoped, he was silently desperately holding out for Clint to say - “wanna fuck?” 


	131. Chapter 131

“I might have had a few shots,” Tony told Steve’s belly, happily. Steve’s belly didn’t respond, but something overhead rumbled. 

“Pretty sure you’re not the only one.” 

“Ooh,” Tony said, wriggling around until he was face-up, which was an improvement. He could see right up Steve’s nose. “What am I missing?” 

“Wanda’s teaching Vision to dance,” he began, and Tony debated sitting up for all of a second. 

“Sounds adorable,” he decided, “but not vertical worthy. Next?”

“Clint’s taught Dummy how to high five and he’s abandoned waiter duty and keeps smacking people in the face.” 

“…that is beautiful,” Tony said, flailing in a vaguely upright-aimed way, “and Barton is my new favourite in all things.” 

Steve did a sideways wincing smile. 

“You’re not his, sorry Tony.”

“How could you -” Tony said, leaning up on his elbows now, betrayed to his _soul_  - “the _audacity_  -”

“He’s been making out with Bucky for the past ten minutes,” Steve said flatly, and Tony shot upright at a speed that, for future reference, _could_  break a supersoldier’s nose. 


	132. Chapter 132

“You weren’t supposed to hear that.” 

“Me?” Clint said, wide blue eyes the picture of innocence. “I heard nothing.”

“Thanks, pal,” Bucky let out a huff of air, tried on a grin. “I appreciate it.” 

“No, I -” Clint paused, then rolled his eyes. “Oh, okay. You’re hilarious.” He was aiming for pissed but apparently couldn’t hide that he was a little hurt. 

“…sorry?” Bucky said, and Clint’s hurt look transformed into a scowl, and not his regular half-amused expression. He looked _pissed_. 

“Not funny, asshole,” he said, and spun on his heel, ignoring Bucky’s attempts to call him back. Bucky turned to Natasha, who was watching him curiously, and spread his hands. 

“Okay, what did I do?”

“You don’t know that Clint is deaf?” she asked, and Bucky’s heart fell into his stomach and splashed his insides with vicious acid bile. 

“But - he -”

“If we are working with electromagnetic weapons he does not wear his hearing aids.” She bent to untie her boots. “Tony has engineered a relay from our comms to the screen of his phone. It is not always effective when we speak at once.” 

“Wow,” Bucky said, stunned. “Wow, I look like an asshole.” 

“You look like an asshole,” she agreed. “But at least you have experience.” 

She stepped out of her boots, leaving them splayed on the floor, and walked barefoot into the elevator, leaving him contemplating just how hard he had fucked up. 

*

Clint tried to make himself feel better thinking about the way Steve and Bucky ribbed each other, the way they acted like Clint and Barney always had, but a little of the hurt - he hated to have to admit it - was because brotherly had really not been what he was going for, with Bucky. Hadn’t been where he thought they were headed. 

At least now he knew, right? And it wasn’t like ‘asshole’ was a new designation, when it came to Bucky Barnes. He just hadn’t realised that he aimed for where it hurt. 

The lights pulsed gently to let Clint know that someone was at his door. 

“Open up FRIDAY,” he said, and immediately regretted it when the man himself walked through his door, looking shamefaced and - as freaking always - ungodly attractive. 

“Fuck,” Clint said, and collapsed backwards onto his couch, tipping his head up to look at the ceiling. 

“You - er. You can hear me now, right?” Bucky said. 

“Verizon ad,” Clint told the ceiling. “Also entirely new to me.” 

“I - don’t actually know what that means.” The other end of the couch dipped a little under Bucky’s weight, and Clint pounded his head into the soft back a couple times. 

“Well at least this one was accidental,” Clint said, and Bucky made a pained noise. 

“I didn’t know you’re deaf,” he said. “I’m kind of behind on my reading, figured the important parts I’d find out when I needed to.” 

Clint rolled his head to the side, curious, and yeah - that was Bucky’s sincere expression, the one he usually only used when Steve was unhappy, and being put on that level was awesome and heartbreaking all at the same time. 

“Okay,” he said, relaxing back into the couch. “You’re forgiven, I guess.” 

“You gotta understand, I thought - when that bot took out the rooftop, I was genuinely scared that you were -”

“Frappé?” Clint said, amused. Bucky winced, reflexive, and it was - it looked involuntary, like the thought actually made him flinch, which was… new. Interesting. 

“And I said - I thought you hear me say -” he cleared his throat and looked down. “Er please, please don’t die.” He looked up, caught Clint’s eye, sky blue meeting earnest stormy grey. “And -”

He shaped his hand into a sign and Clint didn’t mean to, he didn’t, but the snort slipped out regardless. Bucky was the one looking hurt this time, and Clint slid quickly along the couch to grab his arm, stop him leaving. 

“Um,” Clint said, “that’s - that’s the horns, bro. So unless you were wishing me all the best musicians in the afterlife?” 

He slid his arm down to Bucky’s hand, pulled out the pointer and pinkie and then carefully, gently extended the thumb. 

“Kinda hoping you meant this,” he said. 


	133. Chapter 133

Growing up, Bucky had always been the kind of guy to have kids follow him. Not just Steve, ‘cos obviously Steve, although often he’d found himself skip-hopping along in front to stay ahead, to stay in charge. But the neighbourhood kids, too, they’d follow Bucky and beg for treats off Bucky and climb him like he was something immovable and the definition of safe. Steve had always watched the way he taught them to catch, commented seriously on the beauty of a broken-down doll, and he’d been kinda envious of that certainty. Of being able to look ten, twenty years into the future and know that Bucky’d be the most amazing dad.

So yeah, okay, maybe he’d found himself kinda overlooking the way Bucky smiled, secret and small, when Jimmy Callaghan grabbed him by the back of the neck and tugged him in for a rough hug, 'cos his smile for Mary Clark was so much wider and more open, and it was easy to see his blue eyes on a kid with her fair hair.

It’d always been one of the worst injustices. When Bucky lost that sparkle in his eyes. When Bucky’s clenched jaw took hold of those smiles and hid them. When Bucky fell and Steve’s world ended, and when he realised Bucky was never gonna have a kid and, just as bad, no kid was ever gonna have a Bucky.

So he drags Bucky along to the first Avengers charity thing he can. He’s still a little wary, maybe, but he eases and relaxes and unclenches over the course of it, watching as Natasha teaches self defence to teens, as Bruce blows something up to wide-eyed stares.

Clint’s teaching the basics of archery to a group of excited kids, with exactly the right blend of humour and confidence boosting to get them to loosen up, have a go. One tiny girl, he kneels down to adjust her aim, signing his instructions to her, and the grin on his face is as wide as the world.

Steve’s not so surprised to see Bucky watching him from behind his hair, smiling secret and small.


	134. Chapter 134

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continued from #133.

“D’you think - ?” 

They’re drinking again. Bucky’s opened up some; not like a flower opening, or one of those weird tea ball thing Bruce loves. Clint feels a little like a traitor for thinking of venus fly traps, but there’s that same sense of controlled force, that sense that a moment’s movement could snap him shut. But Clint feels like he’s not a fly in Bucky’s fly trap world, that maybe he doesn’t make enough of an impact to shake Bucky closed, or maybe he’s treading always just right - which’d be a first - ‘cos it’s evening and it’s quiet and they’re drinking again. 

“Try not to,” Bucky eventually answers, when the silence has gone on a little too long, and it’s a way out. Escape route. Path to safety between steel trap teeth. 

Fuck it. 

“D’you think they could have loved me? My parents.” 

They’ve been talking, out in the quiet. They’ve been talking like Clint doesn’t talk to anyone save Tasha, and he’s pretty sure she’s the other half of his soul, only maybe his soul’s always been divided in three. 

“You think they didn’t?” 

Clint grins, and it’s a private grin, not the sort you wear in public, ‘cos it’s considered rude to show off that much of your hurt. 

“Don’t need to think it,” he says. “My ears’re fucked up and my knee still hurts when it rains. I just was thinking, if they _could’ve_. If I’d been diff-”

“Don’t,” Bucky snaps out, and it’s not a snap like a trap closing, it’s a snap like a guard dog’s teeth. Protection. 

“I love kids,” Clint says, and maybe it sounds like a tangent but it’s not, not really. 

“You’re good with them,” Bucky says. He’s got that tone that’s secret and a little soft, like the smile he sometimes wears when he’s convinced no one’s looking. 

“I’m always scared I won’t be,” he says. “Like my hands’ve got rough in them, just waiting to come out.” Clint twists his bottle until it’ll stay upright on the loose gravel, then lowers down until he’s laying on his back. Tallest thing around and it’s still next to impossible to see the stars. 

“I know that feeling,” Bucky says. 

“Yeah.” Clint stays fly-trap still as Bucky lowers himself on his elbows next to him. “You don’t touch people,” he says. 

There’s a moment’s motionless thought, breathless silence, and Clint wonders if he’s stepped wrong for all of a second before Bucky turns onto his side, leaning over Clint a little, clenching and opening his fist. 

“I’m trying,” Bucky says. He shows Clint his smile, just for a second, like lightning. 

Clint loses all of his breath. 

“I don’t give a fuck about my parents,” he says, rushed and uneven, “d’you think you could -”

Bucky ducks down and presses secrets against his mouth.


	135. Chapter 135

Clint Barton is freaking shameless when it comes to body heat. He will walk the streets mid-winter with his sleeves rolled up and his jacket most likely on his living room floor, but as soon as there’s a possibility of jamming his bare toes under someone’s leg, or shoving his cold hands into someone’s sweater pocket, or burying his cold face against someone’s shoulder, Clint is as pathetically needy as Lucky and possibly more so. 

The other Avengers react different to the invasion of their personal space. For Natasha it’s never an issue, because his years of practice reading her unspoken signals means he never approaches unless he’s certain he’s welcome. It’s not an uncommon sight, though, to see her using him as a backrest, or to see him balled up as close to her as he can physically get. They tangle together with the ease of years, and she has always previously been his first choice. 

Bruce - while he will not generally be sold on the touching - will rest his teacup on Clint’s thigh and let the warmth bleed through. It’s not much, but it’s more than anyone else generally gets. 

Tony’s frankly up for anything so long as his hands are free. Clint will sometimes bury his face in Tony’s stomach, stretched out along the length of the couch, and stay there for hours at a time. Pepper’s understanding of his love of her angora and cashmere, and will let him drape his arm around her during the winter months. 

(Happy Hogan never really joins them during Avengers time, but Clint secretly and platonically adores him - he is essentially the human embodiment of a hug.) 

Steve’s kind of an odd one. Cap days, he’s rigid and authoritative and kinda hard to snuggle; Brooklyn days, which happen more and more often with Bucky’s presence in the tower, he’ll sprawl and lean and occasionally smack Clint with the back of his hand when he gestures. Sam’s the best, not for extended casual contact, but when it comes to long, firm, supportive hugs. Sam could legitimately get a smile out of a rock, but he’s kinda new around here, so Clint is careful not to use him up. 

Thor? Thor’ll give Clint a hug and lift him off his feet and then possibly wrestle him to the floor, depending on his mood. Thor is _amazing_. 

So they maybe notice that Clint’s not invading their space so often, but they collectively don’t really think much of it when he’s pressed up against Bucky as often as he can be. Sure, Bucky’s prickly, but Clint is nothing if not _persistent_ , so to see him draped over Bucky’s back, or sprawled across his lap with Bucky’s hand in his hair, or tucked in the corner of the couch with Bucky parked protectively in front of him, none of that’s particularly unusual. 

It takes Tony, an elevator and a case of _seriously unfortunate timing_  for them to get that it’s not really Bucky’s _body heat_  that Clint’s after. 


	136. Chapter 136

“What are you afraid of?”

“Literally a hundred things,” Clint said, with an awkward laugh. “I can go alphabetically, if you’d like? Aardvarks have always kinda freaked me out.” 

“How much’ve aardvarks got to do with your dating history?”

“Not… a whole bunch.”

“Then let’s skip the aardvarks,” Bucky said, and his slow smile was melting Clint like butter. “Maybe stay focused?”

“Okay. Alphabetically.” Clint considered for a second or two. 

“Commitment,” he said. “Divorce.” 

“Alphabetically?” Bucky asked, then at Clint’s nod, “so… not cheating, then?” 

“Never intentionally,” Clint said, and at Bucky’s admittedly kinda incredulous look, “I’m a little dumb. Um. And I can barely cope with one human being, so more than one is like -”

He mimed juggling and, eloquently, fumbling balls, which was bullshit entirely ‘cos Clint’d never fumbled juggling in his life. But he was pretty sure he got his point across. 

“Okay,” Bucky said, and he was amused, and Clint felt like he was top of the world any time he could make Bucky sound amused like that, and not only was he getting in deeper but he’d decided entirely not even to swim. “So, divorce…?”

“Domestics,” Clint said, and Bucky knew enough not to ask. “Exes. Ex-wives.” 

“Multiple?” 

“Nah. But I deeply fear acquiring more.” 

“Fair,” Bucky said. 

“Kids (unexpected),” Clint mimed the brackets, too, and Bucky actually snorted out loud this time, and his helpless hopeless smile was the best of his facial expressions, except for his secret smile, and his frown, and his scowl, and… “Um. Kisses,” he continued. “Lawyers.” 

(”Dating history?” Bucky reminded, and Clint shuddered. “So much to do with it,” he said. “So much more than you could ever guess.”)

“Love?” Bucky asked. And he’d scooted in while Clint was distracted by the alphabet, and his hand came up to gently cup Clint’s jaw. His thumb brushed across Clint’s lower lip and Clint nodded dumbly, so close he was looking from one of Bucky’s eyes to the other, like they always seemed to do in films. 

“So maybe we won’t start there,” Bucky said, his breath warming Clint’s mouth. “Immersion therapy, right? Gotta start small.” 

“Yeah,” Clint said, “good ide-”


	137. Chapter 137

“Just pretend to be my date.”

Clint made a hilariously appalled face, and Natasha’s voice was halfway between laughing and threatening when she responded to it. 

“You _owe_  me, Barton.” 

“I always owe you,” he said, still scowling, “I’m in perpetual debt, and I don’t even know what I’m paying off.” 

“The number of times I have wanted to kill you and denied the urge,” Natasha said, and Clint sighed hopelessly. 

“Then I guess I’ll be in debt forever,” he said. 

“Unless you have a very good reason not to accompany me,” she said, “and your hatred of bow ties does not ever count, you will -”

“He has a good reason,” Bucky said. He’d been watching with some amusement while Steve cooked the both of them dinner, but the genuine distress on Clint’s face was kinda getting to him in that way that Clint had. He was always a sucker for tragic blonds. 

“I do?” Clint said. “I mean. Yeah. What he said.”

“What good reason would you know that I don’t?” Natasha asked, suspicious, and Bucky pushed himself away from the counter, sauntering across to Clint and running a hand down his arm - an indulgence - to his hand. Clint’s fingers wrapped around his automatically, his calluses the kind of intriguing that made Bucky want to feel them elsewhere. 

“We have plans,” Bucky said. He leaned in close to Clint, relished in the feeling of Clint leaning in closer as he breathed into his ear, “pretend to be my date.” 


	138. Chapter 138

“Don’t ask me that.” 

“You’ve asked me for far more personal things.” 

“I’ve  _paid_  you for far more personal things.” 

The kid on the bed’s mouth was still a little swollen, pink, and he couldn’t seem to stop licking his lips. The Soldier would look away as soon as he decided to - since his will was like iron when his will was his own - but he hadn’t chosen to yet. He was conscious of time passing, time _running out,_ in a way that other people were not. 

The kid stretched, fluid movement, his body lean but well muscled with the promise of a future solidity that made the Soldier almost regret this current narrow form; if only he would be back in a few years he was convinced he would see something spectacular. But the Soldier didn’t have a future. 

“How long d’you have?” the kid asked. His blond hair was flopping over his eyes now, and the Soldier felt his stomach twist; not disgust, because the boy insisted he was legal and the Soldier felt disgust in the same way a dying man feels pain - overwhelmingly, and all-consumingly, and impossible to separate from existence. 

The Soldier calculated. The woman’s delayed coach would arrive in three hours but he needed to be established before its arrival, situated in an easily abandoned nest. 

“Not enough,” he said, and wondered at the value judgement. 

“Fine, fuck you then,” the kid told him cheerfully. He rolled off the bed and shoved his feet into unlaced boots, grabbed his shirt off the floor and almost slammed his head into a counter, the narrow confines of the caravan unfriendly to post-coital wavering. “Come see this.”

He was unsure entirely _why_  but the Soldier still followed, through tangled guide ropes and carnival detritus, through split-canvas doorways and into a ring surrounded with seats that made him feel like nothing he could remember, visible and memorable and _real_. 

The kid scooped something off a cart, turned, fired an arrow in one smoothly perfect movement, hitting a target that started a chain reaction. Balls rolled, cups filled and dropped, sandbags slowly rose leaking sand, and at each stage a more challenging shot to ensure the reaction came to its perfect completion. The Soldier watched, satisfied at seeing a craftsman at work. 

“I didn’t need the money,” the kid said, thoughtful, taking his last shot without looking. “Got a sweet enough deal here.”

“Okay,” the Soldier said. 

“And,” the kid said, as the Soldier moved on silent feet, as he fired arrow after arrow into a bristling bullseye, “even though you wouldn’t give me yours, mine’s Clint. Look me up.” 

“No,” the Soldier said, and felt a moment’s strangely shaped and wavering regret that Clint wouldn’t know he was being kind; a first. 


	139. Chapter 139

Clint is a tragic mess on top of the refrigerator, and no one has been able to get at the leftover pizza for hours now. 

“Can we -” Bruce says, hesitant, cleaning his glasses, “can we call Natasha _back_  from DC?”

“I say we do it,” Tony says. He’s chewing absently on a length of insulated wire like he hasn’t realised it’s not jerky. “I mean, how crucial could she be, in the grand scheme of things? We could claim an Avengers emergency -”

“You could be chewing on shoe leather instead,” Steve says in the kinda friendly tone that accompanies the word ‘pal’ and always ends up with someone picking up their teeth. Bucky’s a bad influence. 

Sam is rubbing slowly at his eyes, his phone on the table, ready, for the moment they’ll admit to themselves that the world contains _more pizza_. His earlier suggestion was met with protests, with the mournful observations that sure, there was more pizza, but there wasn’t more cold and rubberised and _day old_  pizza, and that was the best pizza there was. 

There’s a cheerful ding from the elevator doors, and the measured heavy tread of Bucky Barnes’ strut, and then he’s there in the doorway, observing the sad spectacle with the eyes of a man who’s done murder for less. 

“Loath as I am to say it,” Tony pipes up, “we _do_  need him, so no death in my kitchen.” 

Bucky glares at him and walks across, stopping directly in front of the refrigerator. 

“Hey, baby,” he says, in a soft voice that not a one of them has heard before, and Tony kind of assumes he’s talking to the refrigerator until there’s a hopeless sniffle from Clint. 

“Not,” he says. 

“You’re a fuckin’ idiot,” Bucky says, like it’s the most poetic term of affection, like it somehow encapsulates love itself. 

“Truth,” Tony mumbles, and flinches back from Bucky’s resulting glare so hard that he falls off his chair and his teeth slam closed around the section of wire. It’s not the weirdest thing he’s eaten, to be fair, but it’s gonna make tomorrow interesting. 

“Natasha’s been on Skype,” Bucky turns back to say. “She was askin’ about you. Was educatin’ me a little on modern slang.” He sighs, softly, reaches up to wrap his hand around Clint’s ankle, metal thumb stroking slowly back and forth. “We didn’t have Friends in my day, sweetheart.” 

“You said break,” Clint says, defiant. “It’s pretty clear -”

“That’s almost exactly the opposite of what I meant.” 

Clint sticks with staring up at the ceiling, but his arm comes up and he carefully adjusts the volume on his aids. Paying attention.

“I was thinking hotel room, Jacuzzi tub, room service, a lack of earwigging assholes -”

(“Does he mean us?” Steve whispers, obtrusively. Sam smacks a hand over his mouth.)

“- just you and me, baby. A break from all this shit.” 

“Fuck,” Clint breathes. “ _Fuck_.” He rubs the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Well I feel like an idiot.” 

“Yeah,” Bucky says, and in the context it shouldn’t be nearly so fond. 

Clint hauls himself around and drops down, burying his head in Bucky’s shoulder just as soon as he’s back on his feet. 

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles, “I’m such a fuckin’ -” but Bucky cuts him off with a kiss. 

“So you wanna go on a dirty fuckin’ weekend?” he says, when he finally pulls away. And, conscientiously, in the interests of accuracy, “the fuckin’ here is both adjective and verb.” 

“I - yeah,” Clint says, and he’s smiling at the floor which is for the best, ‘cos the brightness could blind someone. “Let’s do that.” 

Bucky kisses him again, then drags him off to pack. 

They take the pizza with them. 


	140. Chapter 140

Natasha steps around fallen masonry daintily, like a cat. She regards Clint for a moment with a professional eye and then pivots on her heel and slaps Bucky around the back of the head.

“What?” He yelps, wounded.

“I told you to look _after_ him!” She says.

“Yeah,” Clint mumbles to himself, “that’s not humiliating at all.”

“I looked after him!” Bucky says, defensive, and ducks and grabs her wrist when she goes for another slap. “What the hell?”

“Clint has bruised, possibly fractured ribs, a sprained wrist and I suspect a broken leg.”

“ _What?_ ” Bucky gapes at her, then spins to stare at Clint, eyes worried, which is kinda interesting. “He said he was fine!” He protests, and Natasha rolls her eyes.

“Yes,” she says, “he does that. He has flown the quinjet with a severe concussion, before, and walked himself to a CVS for band-aids while bleeding out. It is important you know you can’t trust him with recovery.”

“Not a kid,” he says.

“If you were, Bucky would be arrested for how he looks at you,” she replies without turning. So there’s nothing to distract from Bucky’s face, from the slow tide of pink that’s gently washing it.

“C'mon, you lying asshole,” Bucky says, and walks over to Clint, bending so he can put one arm behind his back and the other under his crooked knees.

“I feel like a princess,” Clint says, then lets out a - grunt, we’re gonna go with grunt - as Bucky straightens to his feet.

“Well if you faint I promise I’ll kiss you awake,” Bucky says, and Clint feels a little like swooning.


	141. Chapter 141

There should be more of a variety of gay clubs, in Clint’s opinion. It’s all about the pounding bass, the diva hits, the sweat and the grinding and he gets that, he does, but when you’re a deaf PTSD suffering clumsy archer with no rhythm, sometimes all you want is a really gay bagel.

So when he sees the rainbow flag sticker in the window next to the gorgeous looking cupcakes, when he takes a step back and realises the damn shop’s called Cake Boys and there’s pride flag bunting strung in honour of the day, there’s really no other option but to push open the door with a cheerful ‘ting’ and take a lungful of warm sweet air.

There’s a guy behind the counter when Clint walks in, and Clint offers an automatic grin. The guy eyes him up and down - his shirt’s a little tighter than usual, and his jeans are somehow trailing glitter - and walks through the beaded curtain behind the counter. Someone else gets shoved out in his place (and there’s no question it’s a shove, he almost crushes a cream horn).

“Hey,” the guy says. Unlike the first guy - dark hair, stubble, beautiful in the way of things that can kill you - this one’s like a perfected version of Clint. Clint hates him, just a little, on principle. “What can I get you?”

“No clue,” he says, honestly. “Never had that much of a sweet tooth.”

“Cheese danish?” The guy asks. His name tag says 'Steve’, but it’s been doctored to 'cap'n Steve’ and has a red star sticker half hanging off the edge.

“Sure,” Clint says. “That sounds great.”

“Hey Buck,” Steve hollers, “cheese danish ready?”

“Yeah, yeah, keep your freakin’ shirt on,” is the growled reply, and then the guy from before emerges, carrying a tray of faintly steaming pastry. He’s got his hair tied back but a couple strands have fallen free, and Clint gets a sudden and inexplicable urge to carefully tuck them behind the guy’s ear. He’s pretty sure it wouldn’t be welcomed, though, the way the guy’s glaring at him.

Steve bags up a danish, takes Clint’s money and makes change, and the whole time Clint’s the subject of a grey-eyed stare. He takes a bit of the danish almost absently, has to suck in air quickly to cool the lava he’s choking down, and it’s a second before the taste hits.

“Holy shit,” Clint says. “Holy _shit_.”

“Good?” Steve says, with the confidence of someone who knows there can only be one answer.

“Marry me,” Clint moans, unashamed, and Steve laughs and jerks his thumb at the angry kitchen guy.

“Bucky’s the baker,” he informs Clint. “I mostly just stand out front and look pretty.”

“Don’t want to intimidate them with the sexy death glare?” Clint says, and Bucky - whose name tag proclaims him to be 'Sarge’ and has a star and a skull at either end - looks a little startled for a second before turning abruptly and pushing back through the bead curtain, looking a little pink.

Steve watches him go, grinning fondly, and Clint feels a little pang at the obvious affection there. Obviously the both of them are too hot to be single, but Clint can pine over Bucky’s face a little if he wants to.

“Thanks,” Clint says, raising the pastry a little in a toast.

“No problem,” Steve says, and flicks another little grin over his shoulder. “Hope we see you around.”


	142. Chapter 142

The asset wakes. 

There are tally marks all over the walls, and he has made assumptions about what they are for, but they don’t allow him to retain that knowledge. He does not know if they are his or if he is one of a line of soldiers; he doesn’t know if he has remembered to scratch a line on even half of his days. 

All he knows is the narrow cot, the weight of his arm, the Mission. All he knows is his first thought every morning is the hope that someone will kill his soulmate today, that his bones will start aching and his hair start graying, that he will slow and stumble and be allowed, finally, to fail.

He sits and watches the walls in the semi-darkness. Distractions are, of course, not permitted; he will be fetched when the hunger is gnawing at him, will be fed, will be taken to the concrete-walled conditioning room where there are machines for exercise and training. On good days there might be men there to fight, and sometimes some of them have aged, visibly, and the asset is out of practice with emotion but envy he knows. 

The boots echo earlier, this morning. There are no timepieces for his use but the routine is familiar enough that he tenses when it is changed. He scratches a tally mark into the wall and stands to face the door, feet braced apart and hands clasped tight behind his back, as is expected, as he has been trained to. The man who appears is unfamiliar, but he expects nothing else. He has never before seen a reaction so strong, though, and he curiously regards the pale face, wide blue eyes, softly open mouth. 

“ _Bucky?”_

“Who the hell is Bucky?” he asks, voice rusted almost to nothing with disuse. 

“Step back,” the man says, and the asset - used to following orders without question - does so. The man lifts one red-booted foot and kicks at the cell door; there must be something impossible about him, like the asset, because the door only holds out so long before it buckles and bends. 

“Follow me,” he says, and the asset hesitates. 

“Who _are_  you?” 

The man smiles, somehow still sad, and his eyes wrinkle a little at the corners, and the asset hates him. 

“I’m, um. I’m Steve?” his voice is uncertain, unsteady. “I’m here to rescue you.” 

The asset considers this, then nods. He follows the man - Steve - through familiar winding corridors, then those that are not so familiar, although the sense of dread and the stomach-twisting sense-memory of pain suggests the lack of familiarity should be appreciated. 

Eventually they reach a room which has a hole in the wall, a room which is filled with an unfamiliarity of warm light. There are bodies on the floor, men tied up in the corners, but the asset only has eyes for the outside, walking over on stumbling feet. He blinks, feeling off-balance and unfamiliar fear as he tries to adjust to the light; the men who approach him he braces to face until Steve’s voice - already somehow familiar - calls out. 

“Buck, they’re with us.” 

“So winter soldier,” one says. “The man, the myth.” 

“Hey,” says the other, and the asset cocks his head a little at his voice. It’s unfamiliar - most voices are unfamiliar - but still somehow tugs at him. “So Tony’s an asshole,” he says. “You’ll get used to it.” 

He holds out a hand and the asset mirrors him, automatic. 

“I’m Clint,” he says, and the asset’s eyes are finally ready to see the pretty lines of his grin. Their fingers touch; something settles into the asset’s bones and sets to aching there. 


	143. Chapter 143

The problem with spending much of your teenagehood jerking off to Bucky Barnes is the real thing’s gonna be a disappointment every time. Teen fantasy Bucky Barnes is wowed by Clint’s smooth pickup lines - real life Bucky has no chance to react to them ‘cos Clint has yet to get more than three words out around him. Pretend Bucky’s beautiful grin decorated his bedroom wall and his locker and for a time Clint chooses not to discuss his goddamn _wallet_ ; real Bucky Barnes might well have a smile but Clint hasn’t seen it yet, and he’s not sure anyone else has either.

He’d like to say he doesn’t still jerk off to teen-fantasy unbuttoned-Henley Bucky, that he doesn’t sometimes still dream about that wide mischievous smile, and hey, he can absolutely say that if you want him to - Clint’s never had a problem with lying, he’s just had a problem with not blurting out the truth after. And the truth - the truth is the word disappointment is a lie. The truth is…

Clint is a little in love with Bucky’s sense of humour, how much of a goddamn asshole he is. The truth is Clint has never yet missed a shot when he’s watching the way Bucky moves in a fight, but he’s got a terrifying feeling that it’s a matter of time. The truth is that one time he caught the edge of a tiny glimpse of smile, and -

And the truth is, 'a little’ isn’t the truth at all.


	144. Chapter 144

James Buchanan Barnes idly considered getting into real estate, for a time. He hadn’t ever really seen the appeal, but it was suddenly a lot more attractive when some guy in Bed-Stuy fucked over the Russians, sent them packing. Something the Russians wanted was always worth acquiring, ‘cos Bucky fuckin’ hated the Russians. 

He went to see the building personally. Usually he’d send one of his guys out to case it, but he was disposed to like this guy, this Barton, kinda wanted to meet whoever’d sent the assholes running. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting, actually - some slumlord, maybe, gold chains and rings on every finger, attitude oozing out of every lightly sweating pore. Instead he got - well, he got Clint. 

“Hey,” he said to a kid on the sidewalk, offering twenty bucks. “You know Barton?” 

The kid regarded the money suspiciously, then looked up at him with a scowl and folded arms. 

“What’s it to ya?” 

Bucky was, reluctantly, impressed. He kept himself in shape, towered over the little guy, but the set of his tiny jaw said he’d fight to the death over Clinton Francis Barton, and that was the kind of loyalty Bucky respected. 

“Just wanted a friendly chat,” he said, and tried on a charming smile. The kid wasn’t impressed. 

“Clint has Avenger friends,” the kid said. “They could kick your ass all up and down this street.” 

“T’Shaurn you watch your mouth,” a woman said. She’d come out onto the front stoop, was standing there with her arms crossed, the expression on her face scarily similar to the kid. “Can I help you?” 

“Just looking for Mr Barton,” Bucky said. His charming smile had no more traction with her than with her kid. “Old friend, thought I’d look him up.” 

“Uh _huh_ ,” she said, and then called over his shoulder. “Hey, Clint, you know this guy?”

The guy coming up the sidewalk was tall, lean, tow-headed, and had the most gorgeous pair of blue eyes that Bucky had ever seen. They stood out even more against the black eye he was sporting, a band-aid crossing one eyebrow and a brace on the wrist that was propping up the paper bag of groceries on his hip. 

“Am I supposed to?” Barton asked, and his voice was suspicious and low with a little husk to it, and Bucky liked the sound of it immediately. 

“James Barnes,” he said, and stuck out a hand, and unless his eyes deceived him Clint Barton had no objection to his charming smile. 

“Hey,” Barton said, grabbing his hand to shake it, his hand curiously calloused. He overreached, unbalanced himself, and the paper bag slid out from his hold. Barton fumbled for it, almost grabbed it, but it plummeted the last few inches to the floor and landed with an ominous crack. 

“Aaw, eggs,” he said, and rubbed at the back of his neck, and seriously this was the disaster that had ousted the goddamn Russians? This pretty eyed clumsy friend of the Avengers, who inspired loyalty in tiny kids but couldn’t even shake hands without chaos? 

Fuck, Bucky wanted him. 


	145. Chapter 145

So apparently the ideal response to someone mentioning your three month anniversary coming up is not to yelp ‘woah, wait, we’re _dating?’_ and fall off your chair. 

And now Clint _knows_  that, so hey. Important life lesson learned. On the other hand, he’s pretty sure both Captain America and the Winter Soldier want to kill him, so possibly not learned for very _long_. 

Tony scoots his stool over to the bench under which Clint’s hiding, and the kick in the ribs doesn’t feel all that accidental. 

“Barton, you’re an idiot,” he says, and Clint doesn’t have a decent argument to refute it. 

“But he’s so hot,” he says, plaintively. “How was I supposed to know he wanted to be dating me?” 

“Kissing coulda ‘een a clue,” Tony says, slurring a little around a screwdriver. “Also all the hhhhucking.” (Apparently fricatives are hard.) 

“I just thought we were - having fun,” Clint says, doleful. “Scratching an itch.” 

“And you chose - of course you chose the Winter Soldier with which to scratch.” Tony’s disappointed in him. Clint curls himself into a tighter ball. 

“Fuck,” he says quietly, and buries his face in his knees. 

“Just let him down gently,” Tony says. The busy little noises have stopped, a rare moment of focus. “Don’t be an asshole about it, okay?”

“…Let him _down?”_ Clint’s voice is off the charts, high and incredulous. “Jesus, Tony, I’ve been in love with the guy since he moved in here. Why the fuck would - he’s gonna ditch _me!”_

 _“_ Yeah, no, I don’t think so,” Tony tells him. “You didn’t see his face. You’ve got some grovelling to do, don’t get me wrong, but -”

Clint scrambled out from under the bench, ready to head right into the teeth of an ass-kicking, if an ass-kicking is what Bucky needs to do. 

“You think?” he asks, desperate for the reassurance, and Tony rolls his eyes. 

“If you can’t see that Barnes is gone for you, you’re more hopeless than I thought,” he says. Clint hares towards the lift and Tony calls after him, “no requiting on the goddamn couches, Clint, you hear me? Clint?”


	146. Chapter 146

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continuation of #144

“So - what the hell is it you _do?”_

James Barnes - Bucky to his friends, apparently - was the kind of person restaurants rearranged themselves around. Clint had seen the look, he’d seen the waiter guy’s face; people in sneakers and badly crumpled dress shirts didn’t eat at these kinda places, only Bucky had somehow jedi’d them into ignoring the way Clint was dressed. He just had to say his name and they were finding him a table immediately, even though there were several couples waiting in the bar. Clint had seriously never felt more out of place in his life, and he’d been to several Stark galas, okay, he could do regular fancy. 

“I’m - a businessman,” Bucky said, his voice careful and his eyes a little cold, like he was making an effort to hold something back. “I’ve got several interests.” 

“Huh,” Clint said. “Evasive.” 

“My career isn’t particularly interesting.” Bucky caught his eyes, flashed him a beautifully practiced grin. “I’d rather hear about you.”

“I’m not particularly interesting,” Clint parroted, and Bucky stretched out and tapped a finger against the back of his hand, grinning. 

“I have to disagree.” 

“Man,” Clint said, “that was _smooth_. I’m an expert at smooth, I can recognise it a mile off, and that was top ten material.” 

“Top ten?” Bucky asked, cocking his head and looking like he was deciding whether to be offended. 

“Hey, I know Tony Stark okay, the competition is pretty stiff.” 

Something flared in Bucky’s eyes, something dark and kinda intense that sent a little prickle down Clint’s spine. 

“I guess I’ll just have to try harder,” he said, and Clint couldn’t work out if he was looking forward to it or whether he should start running now. 


	147. Chapter 147

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Linked to #144 and #146

Clint opened his eyes, finally, at 3am, but he didn’t do much more than blink fuzzily at Bucky and fall right back asleep. But it was - it was something, it was enough to loosen the tight pressure in his chest. He sent Connor for coffee and didn’t move from the hard chair in the corner of the room, watched with dark eyes as the nurses buzzed around him. 

He’d - it felt like he’d barely closed his eyes for a second when Connor put his hand on his shoulder and shook him a little. 

“Boss.” 

Bucky blinked himself upright, pushed out of his chair and straight over to the bed, grabbing for Clint’s hand and feeling a little sick with relief at the awareness in his eyes. 

“Hey, Buck,” Clint croaked, blinking lazily, and smiling syrup slow and sweet. 

“Fuck,” Bucky said. “Ah, fuck, _Clint_.” His voice was choked when he told Connor to go get himself something to eat, when he had to hook a chair closer with his foot so he didn’t have to let go. 

“‘m okay,” Clint said, “hey, hey sweetheart, I’m okay.” 

“I will murder every fuckin’ one of them,” Bucky said, low and impossibly harsh, his lips moving against the back of Clint’s hand. Clint’s other hand, clumsy, came to rest on his head and tangle in the hair there, tugging uncomfortably as he tried to stroke through it. 

“Too late,” Clint mumbled. “Pretty sure they already got arrested. Or squished by Hulk maybe. Don’t need you.” 

Fuck but that hurt. That _hurt_. 

“Well I need _you_ ,” Bucky said helplessly, hollowed out and honest where no one else could see. 


	148. Chapter 148

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the same 'verse as #144, #146 and #147

Clint reaches out to touch a leather jacket, butter soft and beat-up black, and Bucky insists he tries it on, insists he tries it on in a _dressing room_  ‘cos he looks so hot in it that Bucky has to drop to his knees right there. Clint protests but Bucky hands over his credit card anyway, kisses him on the cheek and whispers filth into his ear. Clint turns pink, his shoulders hunching a little. 

For lunch they have sushi and sake, Bucky laughing as he teaches Clint to use chopsticks right. It doesn’t take him long to pick up, he’s got pretty talented fingers, and Bucky gets a little lost thinking about that and doesn’t register the bill coming until Clint grabs it and swears. 

“Oh no, hey, I got it,” Bucky says, and leaves cash on the table, covering them both with a heavy tip. He pulls the jacket off the back of Clint’s chair and helps him into it, maybe getting a little more handsy than he needs to but there’s something about Clint that makes him reckless like that. The curve of his jaw, the line of his shoulders - although they’re looking a little tense, right now. Bucky’s got ideas for dealing with that. 

They walk along in the sunshine, and Bucky bites his lip and grabs Clint’s hand, his stomach fizzing like a kid. Clint sends him a quick sideways grin, squeezes gently at his fingers, and Bucky tells him about all the places he wants to take him. The theater, and the Grand Canyon and, fuck, _Rome_. He thinks Clint would like Rome. Clint listens intently, a little frown between his eyebrows that Bucky wants to smooth away. 

When they slow up outside Clint’s building, Clint’s looking at the floor, won’t meet Bucky’s eyes. 

“Hey,” Bucky says, and he lifts his hand to brush Clint’s jaw. Clint tilts his head into Bucky’s palm and lets out a breath, and the weight in it catches on Bucky’s heart and pulls it down into his stomach. “Clint?”

Clint leans in, uncoordinated and too quick, and he kisses Bucky like he’s dying for it. He pulls them back until he’s pressed uncomfortably to the wall, and Bucky slips his hand behind Clint’s head to cushion it, to provide a moment’s comfort that’ll prevent this kiss stopping any sooner than it has to. 

 _I kinda love you_ , Bucky thinks, and even opens his mouth to maybe say it, but Clint gets in there first. 

“I think we should stop seeing each other.” 

The world is drawn to a record-scratch halt. 

“What?” he asks, dry-mouthed. 

Clint eels out from in front of him, pulls away, and the space between feels so much larger than physics thinks it could possibly be. 

“I’m not - this guy,” Clint says, rubbing at the short prickly hairs at the nape of his neck, the place Bucky’s only just learned he likes to rest his face. 

“What guy?” Bucky asks, stupidly, and Clint tugs at the collar of his leather jacket, frustrated. 

“I’m a Goodwill kinda guy,” he says. “I go to the movies and I eat street hot dogs and I holiday in _Long Island_. The fuck would I do in Rome?” 

“Me, ideally,” Bucky says, and he can feel his face drawing into wryly amused lines ‘cos that’s his defence, that’s always been where he hides. 

“Not like you’re gonna be short of offers,” Clint says, and he tilts his head, stubborn, somehow hurt. “All that fancy shit - it’s not me. And you gotta make your own stuff work out, right?” 

By the time Bucky works out how to argue this, what to say, the battered peeling door has shut behind him. 


	149. Chapter 149

Clint was born with two soulmate tattoos, one on each wrist. It’s rare, but not unheard of, only… he doesn’t feel like he’d fit twice? It doesn’t feel like that would feel right. 

And soulmates, they’re all about feeling right. The marks are next to useless, ball park - at most you can work out their birthdays, watching one number fade out and the next one fade in, but that doesn’t do much to lead you to ‘em. It’s a feeling, is what they all say. You’ll know them when you see them. You’ll know them when you touch. Clint’s been only touching himself for way too long. 

One mark, his parents made him wear a band over, ‘cos it’s gone past 70 on the day it forms on his baby-pink wrist. Platonic soulmates aren’t unheard of either, and that’s the way they tell it to themselves, but that - that doesn’t feel right, either. Clint spends as little time thinking about it as he can, frankly, ‘cos he just ends up confused and a little grossed out. 

The other wrist, his right one, that one’s wrong too. At first he wondered if the reason he only felt like he was in halves, not thirds, was ‘cos one of them was already dead. It ought to tick over once a year, steady, but it stayed on 26 through the whole of his childhood and only turned 27 when he hit his late teens. The other wrist ticked up - 80, 90 - but 27 stayed 27 for an impossibility of years. 

Clint was pretty resigned to alone forever, even if 100 was coming up and it was still going strong. Fate had screwed him over somehow, and occasionally someone would come interview him for a paper, but they never got back to him to say they’d worked it out. 

There was a brief moment of excitement when he met Tony Stark and they compared wrists - Tony’s hadn’t changed either, stuck perpetually at 26 - but since his reaction to Clint’s other mark had been a screwed up face and a full body shudder, Clint didn’t figure they’d be drinking buddies any time soon. He did toast him, though, when Steve came out of the ice, and he did do his best to ignore the well meaning but utterly useless ‘see? it could happen to you too!’s

Besides, Captain America was exactly the kind of crazy asshole that Clint liked best. He approached situations bull-head first, shield up front and usually without a freaking parachute, which really put the one time Clint rode Hulk like a rodeo bull into perspective. 

They didn’t get to keep him for all that long - went off chasing down ghosts - but then he was back with another bird boy plus his crazy one-armed assassin best friend. (No offense, he’d remembered to say. None taken you tactless fuck, had been Bucky’s response. Clint instantly started making plans for friendship bracelets.) 

Bucky and Clint - they weren’t exactly close, although Clint liked him well enough, plus there was the whole hot like the sun thing. It was just that Bucky didn’t have just walls up - he had barbed wire, electric fencing, possibly moats. Clint was as close to him as anyone could be, which meant they exchanged nods over morning coffee and sometimes found themselves drinking and sharing their taste in films. 

They were mid-An Affair to Remember when Clint glanced down at his wrist and noticed it’d changed to 28. He snorted, a little bitter, and raised his beer. 

“Happy birthday,” he told the universe, and the universe told him, thanks. And the universe - the universe had a voice that was pretty similar to Bucky Barnes. 

“Steve told you?” Bucky asked him, and Clint blinked at him. 

“Um?” he said. 

“You okay?” Bucky asked, with one of his most rare of smiles, and he stretched out his leg to nudge Clint’s bare foot with his. 

They were right. You _knew._


	150. Chapter 150

This one’s a little less direct than the others. He sidles up next to her at the bar, leans back against it with his elbows hitched up and his legs crossed at the ankle. Shitty center of gravity, that way, and she idly contemplates giving him a nudge just to see him fall. 

“Not interested,” she says instead, dry, and a little bit of a lie; he’s got a beautiful jaw line, long dark hair, stormy eyes. 

“Ditto,” he says, with a little smirk, and Natasha looks at him with renewed interest. 

“Avoiding persistent wooing?” she asks, and he snorts at her phrasing. 

“Kinda the opposite,” he says. “Blond guy?”

“Ah, Clint,” she says, and yeah, holy crap, he’s exactly Clint’s type. 

“Clint,” he says, narrowing his eyes and tasting the name, visibly deciding it’s good. They stand there side by side, watching the dancers with matching contemplative looks, and she thinks he’s picking up nearly as much as she is. 

Clint’s in the mass of bodies but Tasha can catch the occasional glimpse; every time she sees him he’s pressed close to another guy, and she can guarantee he hasn’t noticed a one of them’s interested. One of them gets a little handsy and Clint pushes away with a protesting laugh; abrupt tension next to her just as quickly eases. 

Eventually the song switches and Clint forges his way out of the crowd, hair standing up in ridiculous tufts, someone’s drink a dark stain down his side, wide genuine smile on his face. He looks like a cheerful idiot and he’s already eyeing the guy at her side, unsubtle and already resigned to rejection, she can see it in his eyes. 

“Hurt him -” she says, not looking at him. 

“Death,” he says. “Sure.” 

“Ask him about his dog,” she says, and pushes away from the bar, already moving to the rhythm of a good night. 


End file.
